The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories (6 page)

Larger wild animals, although seldom dangerous, contribute their full share to the tribulations of lookouts. Porcupines are fond of the salt in rubber and will eat the tires, and even the fan belts, off a lookout's automobile. Mountain goats like to gather in the middle of the night for a playful romp on the catwalk the surrounds the lookout's sleeping quarters. The goats so successfully upset the night of one lookout that he kept falling asleep during working hours, an offense that the Forest Service ranks about equal to that of the Army sentry who dozes at his post. He finally built a barricade to keep the goats off the tower stairs.

Many of the lookouts are from large cities and at first have some difficulty identifying their wild animals. A lookout once radioed that he had a coyote hanging around his tower. For several days, he entertained the boys back at the ranger station with descriptions of the antics of this friendly and daring animal. When he told one day of the coyote trying to claw its way into the cabin, the rangers decided they had better have a look at the critter. It turned out to be a bear. Another lookout, obviously nervous, reported, “Big, hairy beasts are ganging up around the foot of my tower.” He went outside for another look, and quickly returned to the radio. “Now they're coming up the stairs!” he shouted. The local ranger leaped into his four-wheel-drive and flailed it all the way to the tower, his imagination conjuring up the wildest of Alfred Hitchcock scenes. The troublemakers turned out to be a family of pack rats.

Most of the lookouts develop their own methods for dealing with animals that make nuisances of themselves, as did the lady who observed a large bear ascending her tower stairs. When the bear did not heed her vocal threats, she went inside, heated a pot of water, and dumped it on him. He was not seen in the neighborhood again. This procedure, though it may seem absurdly domestic and urban, is now the approved procedure for discouraging bears that like to climb towers.

Occasionally, a bear will threaten a lookout with bodily harm, but only when the lookout is accompanied by a loyal and courageous dog and armed with much good advice is he likely to be in danger. Doug McFarland, a young lookout in the Primitive Area of idaho, was clearing a trail during one wet period when the fire danger was low. He was accompanied by his trusty Irish setter and had been told that if he saw a large bear preparing to mount an attack the best thing to do was to give a loud whoop. A couple of miles down the trail from his tower, McFarland noticed the first sign of a bear: the silent, reddish blur of his dog passing him, fleeing in the opposite direction. Shortly thereafter, the bear emerged from the brush, cleared the field for battle by ushering her twin cubs up a tree and charged. Quickly recalling the good advice, McFarland let out a loud whoop. The bear rushed on. McFarland whooped again. Still, the bear didn't stop. “My third whoop was entirely involuntary,” McFarland recalls, “but apparently I at last had whooped authentically.” The bear skidded to a stop a few feet away and returned reluctantly to her cubs. Shakily, McFarland made his way back to the lookout tower, where his dog awaited him under the bed.

There are other fire-watching hazards. The safest place to be during a lightning storm, rangers like to explain as they sit comfortably in their office swivel chairs, is a lookout tower. This, they claim, is because the towers are decorated with such a formidable mass of lightning rods that it is virtually impossible to be electrocuted there (rangers do not entertain the possibility of a person's being frightened to death). When lightning does strike a tower, the lookout is, of course, sitting at the point of impact. To fully appreciate the stimulating effect of this, you must recall the last time you saw a great ragged bolt of lightning split the sky and counted—1,001, 1,002 . . . until the sound of thunder finally arrived. In a lookout tower struck by lightning, the thunder and flash are simultaneous, creating an effect that is presumably like that of sitting inside an exploding bomb.

The rangers consider the first lightning storm as the qualifying exam for their new lookouts. “Up to then, they're amateurs,” says one forester. “After it, they're pros.” Last summer a new lookout became a pro his first night on the job. His tower was struck nine times. Asked if he would like a few days off to pull himself together, the lookout said no, he would stick to his post—an obvious case of shell shock.

In addition to lightning rods, the Forest Service supplies the lookout with a chair that has a glass insulator on the bottom of each leg. If the lookout sits in the chair, first making sure that it is not situated between two pieces of metal—electricity might arc between them—and if he avoids touching the radio or telephone, puts in his earplugs, and does not leap off the tower, he has an excellent chance of surviving strike after strike with nothing more serious than jangling nerves, psychedelic eyeballs, and recurrent nightmares.

Less spectacular than lightning but much more haunting are the weird balls of blue fire that sometimes are seen dancing about the lookout stations during electrical storms. This phenomenon is called St. Elmo's fire and is caused by harmless static electricity.

Forest fires seldom endanger lookouts, and if a fire should threaten a station there usually is ample time to beat a retreat. But not always. The Sundance Fire in Idaho in the summer of 1967 proved an exception for eighteen-year-old Randy Langston. Stationed on a 7,264-foot Roman Nose Peak, Randy had been keeping an eye on the fire, which had been burning fitfully for several weeks. On the evening of September 1, the fire was about fifteen miles and a mountain range away from the Roman Nose lookout. Then, in a matter of hours, a 60 mph wind whipped the Sundance blaze into one of the worst fires in Idaho's smoky history. In a single day, the fire made a run of twenty-one miles, eventually threatening towns, farms, and homes along a thirty-mile front. At its worst, it burned one square mile of mature timber every three minutes, and its smoke column rose to a height of 45,000 feet. Trapped in the middle of this inferno, Randy continued to make his radio reports until it became evident that the fire was going to sweep right over his tower. He was ordered to take his radio and try to find shelter in the rocks below the station. The young lookout scrambled down to a rock slide, where he spent the night surround by a violent fire storm. The following morning, a helicopter picked him up and flew him to safety. He was a bit shaken, but unsinged.

And the lookout tower? Well, it survived, too. It stands now as a lonely and useless sentinel over 51,000 charred acres that made up one of the most beautiful forest areas in Idaho.

The lookout begins his summer of tranquility by attending a week-long fireguard training school conducted by each national forest. There he learns the various methods of spotting and fighting fires. After completing his training, he usually moves straight into the lookout station he has been assigned to. Most of the stations now have roads leading to them, but a few can only be reached by a horse, helicopter, or on foot. In the early days of lookout stations, the lookout went in and stayed “in” for the season, but now he can usually have a day or two in town each week while a substitute takes his place. In the case of a married couple, the wife can hop in the car and drive to town for a loaf of bread or a divorce.

The first weeks at the station may be spent clearing trails, stringing telephone wires, maintaining roads, or giving the tower a new coat of paint. Daily weather reports are also made. Once the fire season arrives, however, which is usually in early June, lookouts concentrate on their primary job and every twenty minutes must make a systematic check of the area protected by their station. After a week or so, the twenty-minute check is all but forgotten, because the lookout is in the habit of looking. Indeed, he can hardly stop looking.

“After a while, they just look around all the time,” a ranger explains. “You can't hold a decent conversation with them because their heads are constantly turning this way and that. They look like owls.”

Competition between lookouts becomes fierce. Not only do they check their own territory but each other's, and it is a major triumph to spot an unreported “smoke” in the other fellow's range. Working hours as such become purely academic, and lookouts will make a habit of getting up in the middle of the night to make sure a fire hasn't sneaked into their area under cover of darkness. Needless to say, the Forest Service subtly encourages this spirit of friendly competition.

New lookouts at first have some trouble identifying smokes. They will report patches of fog, clouds, dust, and, at night, even the lights from each other's stations. But by the time fire season arrives, they have become experienced enough to know smoke when they see it. Still, they tend to be jumpy and don't take any chances. Last summer during the height of the Idaho fire season, a lookout reported smoke he had just spotted. As it happened, a plane loaded with retardant to be dumped on another fire was just clearing the runway. It was ordered to the new blaze instead. Fortunately, the pilots are required to make a dry run over each suspected site before they bomb. Down below, the pilot could see a logging crew staring nervously up at him as he roared over at treetop level. The smoke was a plume of blue exhaust fumes caused by starting a bulldozer.

Base pay for lookouts ranges from $2.15 to $2.40 an hour. They also may earn a monthly increment from 15 percent to 25 percent of their base pay by working an additional twenty-eight hours a week. They must furnish all of their own provisions, but the room—and the view—is free.

In recent years most of the stations have been “modernized,” which means that wood-burning stoves have been replaced with propane combination stove-refrigerator units. If the lookout's stove burns wood, he must split it himself, regulations requiring that he keep a two-week supply on hand at all times. Stations unequipped with propane also have no means of refrigeration, thus depriving the lookout of the luxury of perishable foods and cool drinks (one young lookout's parents eased—or perhaps ruined—their son's summer on his own by flying their private plane over his station every couple of days and parachuting him a quart of ice cream.) The only time any of the lookouts have running water is if they should break into a sprint while carrying it in a bucket up from the nearest spring.

The Forest Service is quite concerned that its lookouts not go overboard with the “roughing it” concept. The lookouts are representatives of the U.S. government, the rangers point out, and are expected to create a favorable impression. There is no telling when one of the taxpayers may show up for an impromptu visit, regardless of where the station is located, and he is not to find empty food cans moldering on the floor or shorts and bra hung up to dry on the firefinder. After each sprinkling of rain, the windows—all forty or so panes—are to be polished spotlessly clean. Ledges must be dusted daily and the floors and steps—no matter how many of them—must be swept. The grounds are to be kept free of clutter by burning or burying debris.

Lookout stations, once merely functional, are now becoming tourist attractions of sorts. They make excellent destinations for hiking clubs. If he gets careless, a lookout who has not seen another human in a month could find himself kicking cans under his bunk, dusting the table with the T-shirt he has just snatched from the firefinder, and setting his abode in acceptable U.S. representative-type order as 37 members of the Hill Hoppers Outing Club ascend his stairs. The government is even publishing little pamphlets describing lookout stations that the public might like to visit.

The Forest Service currently operates approximately 1,000 lookout stations throughout the country during the fire season. The number has decreased by several hundred during the last few years as many areas changed from detection systems relying almost entirely on fixed ground lookouts to ones employing a few key ground stations supplemented by aircraft patrol. But there is no thought that the ground stations can ever be completely abandoned. Thus, he who would escape for three whole months the grit and grind of people-glutted cities to spend the summer on a Forest Service lookout station will have the opportunity. There is no need to rush. Simply obtain from your local post office and fill out several copies of the Application for Federal Employment, Standard Form 57, and mail them to the ranger district in the national forest of your choice. The Forest Service usually hires its lookouts during January, but a few replacements are taken on as late as May.

So just imagine it. There you are, relaxing on the tower steps as the sun sinks slowly in the west and the darkness rises out of the pine-clad depths of the mountains, finally to embrace this little penthouse, your room with a view. Touched by the last lingering rays of the sun, the tower glows like the first star of evening in the great blue bowl of the sky. Peace. Beauty. Somewhere off down the mountain, a coyote wails. Then your keen, woodsman-type ear picks up a faint sound. It is the sound of porcupines gnawing the tires off your car. From the edge of an alpine grove, you glimpse a herd of mountain goats approaching your tower stairs. The breeze is picking up, the tower is beginning to sway, and rising in the south, blotting out the stars, is a massive thunderhead. It is times like this that you truly rejoice in your solitude; there is no one around to hear you cry.

Risk Assessment

H

elp! I'm being held captive in a canoe by the most boring person in the entire history of the world!

Allow me to point out something you already know, and that is that a canoe is a vehicle of very close confinement. Furthermore, if you are on a ten-day canoe trip, you are not likely ever to arrive at a point along the way where you can simply get out and walk home. This is particularly true if the canoe belongs to you.

If someone bores you on the phone, you can always shout out something like, “Good heavens, the house is on fire! Got to go!” In a canoe, you have no such choice. I suppose you could shout out, “Jump, the canoe is on fire!” then paddle away as soon as your companion was overboard. But it's way too easy to tell a canoe isn't on fire. No, you must sit there day after day and listen to the endless prattle of your fellow canoeist. “Prattle,” by the way, is to raise your partner's level of conversation by an astronomical degree. “Duh” would be a response from him comparable to Archimedes' cry of “Eureka!”