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Show 49 Part Two. Karen Eckels Chapter One. As Janey and Michael rode back from the Heart Lake fire in Yellowstone, Karen Eckels studied wildfire information on a computer screen in Boise, Idaho. The decision to let the fire burn vias not a sudden one; it had been made several seasons before on the basis of data stored in Karen's computer. Karen Eckels seems perfectly suited to her profession, but she arrived at it in a roundabout viay, after a series of the coincidental twists and turns vihich occur in almost every person's life. Born in Kingston, New York, Karen moved to Salt Lake City, Utah when she was five. Her parents bought a house in a new subdivision where no other homes had yet been built, but Karen wasn't lonely - she had her dark-haired sister Nancy, two years older. "For as lon'g as I can remember," Karen says, "Nancy wanted to be an actress. Even vihen vie viere very small we made up plays viith costumes and props. Then after Nancy started school, she taught me to read and virite and work with numbers." Because of this early tutoring, Karen skipped some semesters of school and graduated from high school when she was just sixteen. Ready to start college, she had no certain career goals in mind, but because she'd been editor of her high school yearbook she enrolled as an English major at a college in Washington state. After the first year, when she vent home for summer vacation, a friend told her that the government |
