1964 Plane Crash in the Bob Marshall Wilderness

The plane crash was where the finger of water trough through the scree fields in rivulets in dead center of picture but down in the tree where those little pocket meadows reside.  The lookout sits atop the highest point above.

       

          One late August day in 1965, two people were flying in a small five passenger cessna plane above the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the plane went crashing down.  They were flying above the headwaters of Prairie Valley   The plane started having engine problems and sputtering around the limestone walls of the reef connecting the mountain Prairie Reef lookout sits on and Slategoat mountain.  As the plane sputtered and the engine murmured the fire lookout person took notice of the plane.   The plane whizzed lower and lower buzzing the treetops as it nosedived bisecting a wing and crashing.   The fire lookout manning the tower watched it all happen with eyes big as saucers.  The lookout got on the radio and called Great Falls dispatch and got a helicopter out to the scene as fast as possible.

           A half hour later the wilderness bird beats the wind into submission and flies between Sawtooth Mountain and Castle Reef splitting the Sawtooth Range above Gibson Reservoir where the north fork of the Sun River spills in.  Upon arrival the helicopter flies above the carnage laid to rest in green meadow fields of upper prairie valley.  Pieces of plane lay scattered in and amongst the wall of standing sub-alpine trees and some parts lay in springs and creeks.  The medical people arrived on the scene surprised to find two passengers alive.  One was slowing breathing and in far worse shape than the other.  They placed the victims on stretchers and rushed back to Great Falls on Mercy Flight.  The one person was not so lucky but one did survive.  If it wasn't for the vigilant fire lookout on watch for anything on top of that particular mountain the one person may not have survived and two would have been listed in the obituaries.  

          The drop-off from the lookout is over 1,500 vertical feet down.  I hiked down to inspect the plane carnage one mid-September day on one of my days off.  The hike led along the reef via animal trails threading its way through the rock scree and around blocks of limestone roughage.  It is one of the only paths down off the reef.  All the animals in the area knew about this passage.  Sheep, mountain goats, elk, black bear, grizzly bear, wolverine and lion all left their sign on that trail in the shape of tracks; hooves, paws, feet and scat.  The hike down was about three miles or so and took about an hour leading through sub-alpine fir, the occasional white-bark pine and alpine larch tree.  Lush green meadows fingered their way through the dark pines.  Elk for weeks on end in September bugled through the crystaline air bellowing their harmonious, yet eerie flute-like ivory-inspired calls gumming it between curled lips and open flowing round nostrils.  Giant bulls were seen and heard fencing with their large antler racks like swords whacking each other in the crisp autumn air. Each bull tried to show the other one who was stronger, had more finesse and the best genes to offer the heard.  With each win the bull said to the cows, "Come join my harem!"

LOOK OUT: (prison or paradise) And Then again why did you want to come out?

           

LOOK OUT: (prison or paradise)

Then again why did you want to come out?     

Into the great unknown I flung myself or the United States Forest Service did on top a mountaintop where I sat in my own chosen solitary confinement with three square meals a day and snacks, water in five gallon jugs brought to me on horseback fifteen miles back every three weeks.  Each day was completely mine and belonged to no one but me except when someone called me on the radio to relay messages as a sort of wilderness secretary or more like a stone sentinel in a seventeen foot by seventeen foot squared cell made of wood or the few minutes each day where I sat and looked out over a vast wilderness made of rock, ice and trees searching for signs of forest fires.  The job didn’t require much in scientific skills or training just a desire to be unplugged from modern gadgetry, willingness to be alone and someone willing to try to ‘master the art of solitude’ and someone curious about weather.  I was the perfect candidate.  I will almost try anything once.

               Each day I was allowed to go out in the yard at any time as long as I remained vigilant.  I had to call other lookouts if I was going to go away from the lookout for up to an hour but that is all I was allowed and didn’t even get that if fire activity was too much.  I did pushups, sit-ups, shadow boxed each day and stretching exercises to help keep my mind from getting lazy and stagnate.  Endorphins pumping and flowing kept my mind lubricated and clarified thoughts kept rolling through like a good running machine. Wish I could have hiked longer and more regularly as I find the primitive rhythm of walking tends to delight the mind as Jim Harrison says.  I did tai-chai and tried to sit quietly in my “do-nothing hut” as Jack Kerouac called it in Dharma Bums for up to a half an hour each day.  I had a satellite phone that costs four dollars a minute and used it every few days to call my boss, other lookouts or friends and family.  They were my contact to the outside world except for letters I received and the visitors that came up for the views and the National Public Radio that I that I loved listening to each day. Usually not much changed in the outside world except for a lot of hot air and hoopla;  still the rich and elite trying to profit off of our world at the expense of the health of the planet and the people.  Crazy that they just don’t want to accept that the world is finite and you can’t have infinite growth in a finite world and keep putting profit before people or the planet.

I learned a great deal about myself, the nature of the self and about nature and its laws that govern the universe.  Everything comes in its due times and there really is no reason to hurry or to waste too much time either.  Nature is slow, steady and subtle, yet the beauty permeates all.  To say I didn’t struggle with not being able to check my emails, phone messages or see friends and family at will was challenging, but made it all that much more precious when I did see them or receive a letter.  I had to keep busy with projects like maintenance on the building, drawing, reading or little writing projects or I would wrestle the demons in mind like Jacob wrestling with God in the Bible.  As some great person once said that the most trouble they received from anyone was from themselves and their own mind.  Sure, I had to distract myself from my own tormenting mind just like anyone else, but I had far less distractions up there because everything was narrowed down to the bare necessities and essentials of life and had to face and embrace myself with its many contradictions.  

             I took a shower once a week to conserve water.  I poured water into a solar shower bag and let it heat up all morning and in the afternoon sun where temperatures would reach from eighty degrees to hundred in the bag.  I loved this once a week ritual and helped me realize how important water is and actually got caught showering by hikers a half mile away.  Oh well, I love causing a scene.

             I felt I learned peace and patience for myself and others struggling through long hours and minutes of each day with nothing but myself.  Each day had similarities with the rising of the sun and its setting, the many phases of the moon and the weather irregularities and routines but the subtleties were magical yet slight.  As like the weather that brewed and flowed overhead constantly changing throughout the day or the colors casted in an array and display of dazzling colors of mauve, violet and tangerines beginning and ending each day and an endless starry night spilling across the heavens.  The milky way pouring out of the big dipper in a river of stars and planets and galaxies streaming by in an interstellar night show.  I definitely did not master the now but always looked forward to my two glasses of wine I allotted myself each night throughout the summer and once in awhile a couple more.  Life up there was pretty simple but then one weekend in late September I decided to take an extended weekend and ask my boss for an extra two days off to get a total of four.  Little did I know that this would be an extremely expensive weekend where my life was threatened and I should have stayed up at the lookout where life was easier and simple.

FAST-FORWARD back to taking myself too seriously and wanting extra days off to have extended weekend and go see my lady friend.  After work one night on a Tuesday night about four-thirtyish I began the fifteen mile hike out and trudged back to the trailhead as dusk was settling and shadows were creeping out of tree wells and from behind trees where they lie hidden all day.  It was about seven thirty at night.  Remember this was mid September.   I approached my car and the cabins in the waning light and noticed several of the firefighters that I work with or then again not really because I am a fire lookout and work alone, but the fire crew were at Benchmark cabin and talked me into staying the night, hanging out until the next morning which was fine, because I was tired and couldn’t drive that far that night anyhow.  Since where I was heading was Flathead county and it is five hours north-east of Augusta.  Montana is over 600 miles long.

rodents like marmots and pack rats try to eat their way into cabin.  Not their fault they must stop their perpetually growing teeth, so they gnaw to control length or they will grow into their brains and kill them.

new cement board siding and steel runners for the shutter grooves we installed

            

new steps I built

            REWIND. . .as I drove to the trailhead on my very first day of the season I was being followed by Joe Woodhead the packer who packed me up to the lookout.  I was going to help him wrangle up the mules and horses we would need to carry my provisions up for the year.  I pulled into Willow Creek jumped out of my car and went with Joe to halter the stock.  We always had to catch the mare first.  Her name was Ruby and she was a cinnamon red mare with Ruby red hair.  All the other male horses would follow and so would the mules because mares represent and are usually ‘mother’.  She is a beautiful horse and if we caught her first it would make our lives a hell of a lot easier.  Well, we did not that easily and they all followed back to the horse trailer but we still had to catch and halter the ones we needed for the trip.  Bam-bam would always be pisses when he did not get to go.  He was an eager beaver of horse that would kind of throw a temper tantrum for being chosen.  He wasn't being chosen this much this season for a minor injury but enough of one to leave him back.

temple (church) pew

          After we gathered up Marvin, Beattle, Marco, Cochise, Ruby, Jody and Higgins .  We noticed my left back tire on my Subaru Legacy was nearly flat.  After I changed that tire and put on a spare I noticed another flat tire and then another.  We decided to leave the car on the jack, lock it up and leave it there and jump in with Joe into the Forest Service half-ton pickup truck.  We got on the radio and called the fire crew to tell them what happened and where my car would be and asked them for assistance to take tires into town to be patched then take my car to the trailhead.  Well, the fire crew did fix it and got the car to the trailhead, but then my fourth tire went flat in the following days.  The Benchmark road was regraded that past spring and all the rock in that area is limestone which is very sharp and great for rock climbing but not for driving on.  According to the local mechanic at the tire shop in town they changed over thirty tires in one day because of flats from driving that road.

Elbow Pass Fire (early stages)

            Later in the season with the numerous wildfires burning in the Bob Marshall Wilderness the Elbow Pass fire threatened the trailhead and all structures around benchmark trailhead.  They had to move my car again and discovered that my battery was also dead.  They had to jump start it with jumper cables just to move it to a safe area.  I heard about all this over the radio up at my lookout.  I just had to laugh because I did not need the car anyhow.  Also I thought that the gods must have wanted me to stay up there all season because of all the mishaps.

Pyrocumulous cloud created by fire.  Fire can create its own storms systems with hail, snow, lightning, rain, winds

             After catching up with many of the fire folks that I haven’t seen all summer I decided to sleep in my car and tossed and turned all night thinking about my car and whether or not it would work, if tires were fine and battery?  Needless to say I didn’t sleep well.

            

The next morning the fire crew and I tried to push start my car ‘Yabba-dabba-doo’ style--”WILMA!” because I thought it could be my celunoid or starter that was going out but that didn’t work and finally tried jumper cables and that worked in seconds.  I thanked everyone, waved and drove off down the winding gravel road the forty-five minutes back to Augusta.  It was seven thirty in the morning and I was off.  I was driving down the road when I kept thinking that I was getting a flat tire because of the way my tire sounded like it was kind of wobbling or something.  I kept putting it off, but then finally jumped out of the car, walked around it and tires were all good.  Remember I haven’t driven a car in seventy days.  I jumped back in not thinking it could be something else, but kept going.  Finally, I drove around a curve around the north side of Nilan Reservoir with sixty foot rolling cliffs on each side of the road and hit another curve and was driving forty-five miles an hour when my front left tire came flying off my car at sixty-five miles an hour.  It wheeled right by car down the middle of the gravel road, then veered off to the left, jumped the ditch, then jumped a four foot high barb wire fence and came to a stand-still on the other side.  I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, white knuckling the Subaru ship as my hub was driving into the pavement and I steered the ship into the shore of the gravel road.  Adrenaline surged through my veins and my heart was nearly leaping out of my chest as I thought, “What the F*&% just happened?”  I jumped out of the car and went after my spinning tire, grabbed it and hauled it back to the car and threw it in the backseat.  All five lug-nuts were gone.  That explained the sound and feeling of a flat tire.  

                I thought to myself, “What else could possibly happen?”  Never-ever think those words.  They are destructive and will send you into a never ending spiral of negativity that one could drown in.  Pulled out my cell phone and turned it on.  No service.  Still too remote.  Got on my hand-held Forest Service Radio. No contact!  Locked the car doors and walked down the road.  Walked a mile and finally got through on my cell phone.  Called Kyle Inabnit the AFMO (Assistant Fire Manager Officer).  He dropped what he was doing and came and picked me up.  We grabbed the tire and threw it in the back of his truck then inspected the studs (bolts the lug nuts go on) and saw that the threads were stripped from the wobbling of the tire for miles.

              We drove into town to the tire shop and asked if he had lug nuts for sale.  He had two and I needed five.  With Kyle’s quick thinking we went and borrowed two more off of another Subaru of a co-worker at the Fire crew’s bunkhouse.  Then drove back out to my car.  We jacked up car as high as we could and barely got the car high enough then slid tire on and put on four out of five lug-nuts as tight as we could, which wasn’t all that tight because of stripped threads.  Then tried to turn over the battery and wouldn’t start.  Had to jump it all over again then drive slowly with Kyle right behind me.

             Made it back into town to a different mechanic and he said I will need five new studs, three lug-nuts, a new battery and new alternator after checking it.  Things just kept adding up.  About this time my head was down and tail between my legs with heart in my stomach.  I told him to order everything he needed.  He couldn’t get it until tomorrow from Great Falls via FedEx.  

          

             “Do what you need to do.”  I told him.  I jumped back in Kyle’s truck and he drove me back to Fire cache and walked to bunkhouse since I needed a room for the night.  One full day of four days off cancelled.  I grabbed a room and was going to mind my own business the rest of the day.  First, I was going to take a nap because of lack of sleep about worrying about car, then do laundry, shower, and go to bar later to do emails.  After laying down a minute decided to kill two birds with one stone and do laundry (since I did it by hand all summer) while I napped.  Had a little bit of dirty hiking clothes in pack and ones I was wearing but didn’t have anything to change into.  I remembered I had clothes cached in the car.  Decided instead of walking a few blocks to the mechanic (cause now back in “the Real World”  need to be in a hurry like everyone else and borrowed friend’s bike that we borrowed lug-nuts off his car from.  Well, he had a flat tire on bike.  I was lazy and stupid enough to still ride it five blocks or so (possibly ruin his rims) and ride a Specialized road bike-that-was-too-big-for-me-and-had-no-business-riding-it.

UFO's could be to blamed for this awful day

                I rode it down the street barely reaching the pedals on a flat lumpy tire.  I rode to the mechanic grabbed some extra clothes and cord to my lap-top computer (because I hiked it out the fifteen miles out of lookout) put everything under one arm and rode off.  I had one hand on handle-bar on top, not by brake and rode back to bunkhouse. I was getting ready to get off the bike and was wearing Chaco sandals and put my right foot back up towards pedal for balance or something (still not sure) and placed my right foot just below big toe into the sprocket.  I forgot how to drive a car and ride a bicycle during the the last two and half months (not really but seemed like it). I received a huge half inch deep and one inch long gash in my foot.  No blood yet just open and exposed cartiledge, veins, tendons and bones.  “FUCK!!”

 I am now in shock walking around the bunkhouse opening up rooms looking for first aid kits but can’t find any.  No blood yet just open void in foot.  Walked outside to look for a plant called yarrow that stops mainly arterial wounds but also any bleeding.  No yarrow anywhere to be found!  Finally grab paper towels because foot is now bleeding.  I have the paper towels puffed up like a paper-mache flower sticking out of my sandal and pasted to wound, walking around like some kind of freak show.  Finally, walk back over to fire cache and show Kyle.  Kyle is on phone, but looks down at my foot as I waddle and limp in his office.  He puts down the phone for a second and asks, “Now what happened?”

                He gets off the phone and hears my story and says, “We have to rush you to the Emergency Room in Choteau to get stitches.  I say I don’t really want to but suppose we should since I didn’t have insurance and it wasn’t on the job.  Finally I agree and we head in.

            

plane crash from '64 that I could see from edge near lookout

 The doctor and nurse tag team me by suturing me up with five stitches and probably could’ve doubled that in stitches, but was practically hundred dollars a stitch.  Kyle meanwhile goes and gets my direct boss Russ and we all go out for lunch that Russ pays for after my expensive trip away from the look/out.  We all agree I should’ve stayed in the lookout.  

            Later that day the mechanic calls and says I don’t need a new alternator the wires just came loose.  That was good news.

           The last twelve or more years my parents and friends back home have worried about all the things that could happen to me living and working in the wilderness like grizzly attacks or black bear maulings, eaten by pack of wolves (which doesn’t happen), falling off a mountain and plunging to my death, drowning while crossing a swollen river from spring runoff of snow melt,  slipping off a log and being impaled by a broken stub, struck by lightening, cut off my leg with a chain-saw, have a tree fall on me in my tent while sleeping, falling in a snow field and sliding to my death, falling in crevasse while crossing a glacier, or dying in an avalanche while skiing or mountain climbing.  Sure many of these things could happen, but most don’t actually happen and living in society and civilization driving a car or crossing a city street is far more dangerous than any of these possible mishaps.  

last day right before getting packed down

                The next day my car is fixed and I drive back to the Flathead scared shitless of driving and having another tire fly off or anything else go wrong.  Hours later I get back to Kalispell and to my storage unit to drop some things off.  I get back in the car and my speedometer and odometer quit working as well.  The last year my gas gauge hasn't worked so I would measure how many miles I would go then fill up my tank.  Usually around 200 to 250 I would go then fill up.  Now I had no technology to measure how far I would go.  I had to tally the miles in my head and guess how fast I was going in relation to other cars if there were any or by the passing landscape.  Kind of tough.  But I did it for next month or so before I got the car into a mechanic.

                My boss allowed me to take a few more days off to let my foot heal and spend time with my lady friend before she moved.  Then when I did go back up to the lookout for a day or two I rode the horse 'Higgins' nearly back to the top.  I stopped an hour from the top then hiked back up slowly not to tear apart or aggravate the freshly sutured foot, which I had wrapped up quite well with extra socks for padding but could barely tie my boots.  Once the horse and I stopped we waited for my boss to hike back up from Indian Point cabin and while the horse and I sat waiting for him I decided to feed the horse some grass.  The horse was roped and hitched to a small green tree.  After I plucked some grass I stood up too quickly into a branch and got a minor black eye.  What a weekend!

a branch poked my left eye

"THE EVER-ELUSIVE VICTORY WITHIN"

 "THE EVER-ELUSIVE VICTORY WITHIN"

                                                          by Marianne Williamson

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. 

 We were all meant to shine as children do.  It is not just in some of us.  

It is in everyone and when we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

                                     

POLLEY'S PERCH (Prairie Reef Lookout)

        POLLEY”S PERCH

         (Prairie Reef Lookout)

I don’t know how to begin to tell you what it is like to be stationed at a remote fire lookout deep in the wilderness for nearly eighty days by yourself.  The experience is beyond words but resonates deep imprints upon my imagination, dreams and every cell in my being.  It was truly amazing!  The sunsets, the sunrises, the storms, the clouds actions, the wildlife, the visitors, the vast starry night were all glorious, but I also don’t want to romanticize the experience too much because it wasn’t all peaches and cream, all day, everyday.  In fact, it was difficult at times.

There were days on end where the visitors did not show their face walking and struggling up the steep trail or riding their horses that stunk of must and lathered up from sweat and reeking of wet leather.  Days where I struggled to be alone dealing with the demons (not literally for you literalists) that rise up from the abyss that anyone knows who has been alone for a long time and begins to take themselves too seriously.  I was forced to live in the moment because there was not a damn thing I could do about my future.  I was drunk on sunsets and sunrises. Other days and moments of days where I was giddy dancing around the lookout with music and drink watching the sunset or being amazed by something life offered out of the big screen, seventeen windows on surround-sound at 8,868 ft above sea level.  

Wave after rippling wave of mountains loomed in my vision like a ship on the water; the lookout looked out over a vast ancient ocean.  My writing desk/kitchen table sat facing the entire length of the infamous “Chinese Wall”.  A vast limestone reef that stretches along the continental divide for seventeen to twenty-six miles depending on what source you read.   On a clear day I could see one-hundred and twenty miles due west all the way to the Cabinet Mountains which separate Montana from Idaho.  I stared out at McDonald Peak as it towers above the Mission Range fifty miles away.  Holland Peak and Swan peak in the Swan Range, Silvertip mountain near Spotted Bear,  the Great Northern with its shark fins rippling and tearing the sky fabric, many peaks of Glacier National Park like Jackson, Stimson, Mt. Siyeh, Battlement, Doody and St. Nicholas, which looks like a middle finger spinning the sky on its finger tip.  Nine different mountain ranges and over three hundred peaks scattering and smattering my vision.  I (eye) was just another mountain in a sea of mountains.  I felt like part of the mountain.  My phenology or sense of place grew and became in tune where I would have an intuition to look up at the right time and feel an animal of sorts was walking on a part of me.

I hate to make lists and read them for the boredom it inspires but here is just a few of the other names of landmarks that the names speak for themselves and conjure up images in the imagination like; Woodtick Mtn, Jumbo, Fisher Pk, Flathead Alps, Red Butte, White River Pass, Grizzly Basin, Chinese Wall, Sphinx Mtn, Mocassin Butte, Cliff Mountain, Damnation Creek, Moose Creek, Larch Hill Pass, Pentagon, Table Mountain, Slategoat Mtn, Wrong Creek, Old Baldy, Rocky Mountain, Mt. Wright, Sheep Mtn, Ear Mtn, Arsenic Ridge, Castle Reef, Sawtooth Ridge,Windfall Creek, Crown Mtn, Renshaw Mtn, Scapegoat plateau and mtn, Sugarloaf Mtn, Scarlet Mtn, Twin Peaks, Bumshot Mtn, Bunyan Point, No Business Creek, Nome Point, White Ridge, Whiskey Creek, Cigarette Rock, Hermit Lake, White Bear Creek, Black Bear Creek, Grizzly Gulch, Scarface peak, Indian point, Feather Woman peak, Badger Two-Medicine, Solitude Point, Two Shacks Flat, Big Salmon Lake, Devils Creek, Devils Hump, Teton River, Sober Up Creek, Fiction Creek and Two Medicine River.  All of these places and place names describe what took place here in the not too distant pass.  Each name strikes up something in the imagination.  These places were my neighbors and inspiration for an entire two and half months and I am very thankful.

Fire Lookout like a nipple on a very large rocky breast

I had over one-hundred and fifty visitors come up to the lookout for the views.  In fact it is one of the most popular places in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.  “Prairie Reef is the creme de crop of the fire lookouts”, one local outfitter told me. It is the highest lookout in the whole state.  

Grizzly Sow and Cub

The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex is one and a half million acres and is larger than Glacier National Park.  It is eighty miles long and over thirty miles wide.  It has one of the largest big horn sheep populations and one of the largest elk herds in the lower forty-eight.  It screams of wildness with all of the species minus bison still remaining here since the time of Lewis and Clark and they tried to find a passage through these mountains.  Mountain Goats and big horn sheep would come by my office once a week.  Golden Eagles and Prairie Falcons soared by my windows each day.  Grizzly and Black Bears were spotted from my perch.  I saw one to sixty head of elk grazing the high alpine meadows with their lush green grasses everyday.  Mountain lions stalked hoary marmots and other creatures in the shadows along cliffs in the dusk and dawn.  Even a wolverine was seen loping down the trail.  I briefly saw it, but I did see its tracks on many other occasions.

Russell Owen and Joe Woodhead lead mule pack string up to bring me supplies

My food, water, mail, propane and building supplies were brought up on horseback once every three weeks by my boss or our packer.  Having mail delivered just to ‘you’ over fifteen miles back was like Christmas; opening gifts, letters and cards reading loving thoughts and inspiration from afar but not so far bringing friends and loved ones to your door in spirit and word.  I did not have a cell phone, internet or luxury of running water; everything was narrowed down to the bare essentials of life.  As Jim Harrison writes, “. . . avoid the junk of our culture. . . it is hard enough to live with what we know without drowning in this junk.”  I am not anti-technology.  It does have its place just as long as it doesn’t rule our lives.

As the author and a previous fire lookout Norman MacClean writes, “It does not take much in the way of body and mind to be a lookout, its mostly soul.”  It is not a vocation for most people and in fact it takes a special breed of person to want to do it and do it and not go crazy.  One has to master the art of solitude because it like an extended vision quest.  One is solitary, but not alone and has to learn to be thrifty and self-sufficient.  The animals, birds, plants and insects were there all the time and imbued with sentience and consciousness some call it “GOD” so I was not alone.  Everything was constantly changing; clouds, animals coming into view, visitors, sunsets and sunrises and mountains slowly crumbling to the sea and your thoughts were like the weather breezing in and out of you.  Everything was so alive and vibrant.  I wasn’t alone.  Time spent being a lookout isn’t spent at all.  Everyday in a lookout is a day not subtracted from the sum of one’s life.

           Each day I would wake around sunrise or before and start my day.  When you are surrounded by windows you are effected by the light and the weather.   As I made coffee on my propane stove I would scan the surrounding landscape for smoke or fires and wildlife.  Then I would start off my day reading poetry still scanning landscape for fire and wildlife.  Then between seven and eight people in the field like rangers, trail crew, Bear DNA people, and others would check in with us to let us know what they were doing that day and where they were going.  We would write it down in a journal and the time to make sure they checked in at night or start a SAR (search and rescue) for the missing person(s).  Then at ten and fourteen hundred we would take weather observations and log it.  We checked the wet and dry bulb temperatures on a psychrometer and subtract the two to get relative humidity.  Then we would check wind speeds via a kestrel weather device.  I would also check cloud or smoke  visibility and figure out percentage of cloud cover and check rain gauge.  We were not required to radio this  in like other lookouts for other forests or the park service unless there was a fire within our vicinity and you record the weather on the hour every hour to predict fire behavior for the firefighters on the ground and in the air.  Other than relay messages and weather observations each day I was required to do building maintenance and the rest of the day was mine to do what I willed.  I had the most freedom I have ever had with any job.  It was better when I had projects to do or took advantage of my time otherwise the amount of minutes and seconds in a day is quite overwhelming and daunting.  "May I enjoy this beauty and solitude in this place of timeless wonder."

Drawing I did this summer of Cliffs of Moore in Ireland

Kyle Scharfe

friend Heidi on a spaceship (a cabin wrapped to save from wildfire)

"Chuck"  Charlie Speicher

Christopher "Lewis" making yerba mate in a Argentina bombilla (gourd)

Jammin and Ziggy (Jon Ziegler)

       

Joanna and Carrie

Prairie Reef Pirates
"Arrggh Land ahoy mate'!"

   I had many of my great and wonderful friends come up for a night or many nights and we had mad and wild fun sharing laughs, drinks and meals.  It was wonderful! I wish I could have brought all my friends up for a night to to see the beauty and discuss what the wildness means to them.  I read over twenty books from “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry to “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey to Stephen King’s “On Writing”; A Memoir of the Craft” to Cormac McCarthy “All the Pretty Horses” to Jim Harrison “Returning to Earth” to John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” and to Phillip Connors “Fire Season”: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout to several poetry books.  Sure, I have read many of these books before but it was nice to revisit them and ruminate on the words of wisdom.  I drew a new drawing of a postcard my friends Brian and Morgan sent to me from Ireland of the Cliffs of Moore.  Also I did several building projects from scraping paint off ceiling to re-painting it, splitting wood, tore apart old stairs and built new ones and tore off old wood siding and put up cement board because rodents (marmots, pack rats and mice were trying to get into lookout and several suceeded.

      

      More updated blogs and pictures to come