Symbols of civilization ...

September 18, 2017

I used to know a guy who spent his summers as a river guide in Utah, taking people on multi-day raft trips through the desert wilderness. He and his fellow guides had a ritual that happened after every trip: as soon as the boats were pulled out of the water and the guests boarded their bus back to town, the guides all headed straight for the closest Wendy's, and ordered large Frostys for themselves. They started talking about those Frostys long before the end of the trip, with great wistfulness ... that cup of soft ice cream was the symbol of civilization they missed the most, more than clean clothes or hot showers or anything else.

I was on a trip with him where he sliced his hand open very badly with a kitchen knife, prepping dinner the first night out. He needed stitches, but he also had to row for two more days to get to a doctor, and so he did it, a roll of tape and gauze wrapped around the wound. The last morning, the guides were talking about the trip's end, trying to decide if they should go to the hospital first, or go to Wendy's first. Their decision: get the Frostys first, and then hit the ER.

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Anyhow, I've developed a similar ritual at the end of my lookout hitches: as soon as I get back to town and drop off the Forest Service radio, I treat myself to one of these:

It's a Bacon Double Cheeseburger from the A&W Drive-In just outside Columbia Falls, Montana. After three weeks of mostly pasta and oatmeal and Mountain House, it's the perfect indulgence ... a reminder that civilization isn't *all* bad. :)

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Anyhow, yeah ... Charlie and I made it back to Bozeman late last night. Yesterday was a lovely day on Mount Baptiste, and I took my time packing and closing up the tower. It was close to 3 when I radioed Kalispell Dispatch to tell them that Baptiste was going out of service for the season, and I locked the door and hit the trail. Made it back to the car in about 2-1/4 hours, my only excitement being the discovery that a mildly incontinent bear had used my trail a few days before. I could feel the beginnings of a cold front moving in as I hiked, bringing the rain and snow that will carpet northwest Montana this week. Summer's over.

I'm going to miss that place, that life.

15 responses

Was that your last summer up at Baptiste? Thank you for all your posts and insight into that life. Many of us can only dream of it.

— Tim Roy

Thanks for coming along, Tim. I have no idea what next summer will bring, but I really hope that I'll be back at either Baptiste or another backcountry lookout. We'll see ...

— Mark Hufstetler

I've read all of your diary until now, since I've seen your post at the firewatch sub @ reddit. Hope you will post there again next year :)

— Dave

I loved reading this as I was also brought here by the subreddit and I'm very curious as to how you got this job and how I could possibly get one like it

— Ben Marohn

Thanks, Ben. I've written on the subreddit some about finding lookout jobs, and here's a short summary: Nearly all of the live-in fire lookouts that are still in use are in the West, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, but with others in the Southwest. I'm guessing the total number of live-in lookouts still in use at this point is down to two or three hundred; Montana, where I live, only has about 30 left. So jobs are often not easy to find. Most live-in lookouts are staffed by paid employees who work for the entire summer, and the vast majority of those jobs are with the US Forest Service. Smaller numbers of jobs are with the Park Service and the BLM. There's a lot of competition for jobs, and very little turnover from year to year. Openings are advertised on the usajobs.gov website, typically in January for the coming summer. This means it's already too late to get a job for 2018. To get one for next year, my advice would be to get an account at usajobs set up this fall, and then start putting together a resume listing outdoor experience. Follow the "Forest Fire Lookout Association" on social media for word on specific listings, and contact the fire offices of the forests you're interested in beforehand. As with any job search, networking is key. A smaller number of lookouts are staffed by volunteers -- this was the case at Baptiste until last year, though the volunteer program there has now ended. Most lookout volunteers only work for part of the season, and the programs are coordinated by individual National Forests -- there's no comprehensive central repository of those openings. Because there are so few of them, most volunteer openings are hard to get, and you pretty much need to be a local to make it work ... that's the only way to hear about most of them, and you need to make multiple visits to the forest for scheduling and training meetings, as well as your staffing shift. Sorry it's not more encouraging! Feel free to contact me privately with specific questions ... there's an e-mail link in the sidebar of the main journal.

thank you for replying although it took me so long to notice, i returned once again in hopes that there would be a 2018 post but sadly that is not the case. I appreciate you telling me how to get into this and I'm defiantly going to look into that this year (or rather next) but Im a bit worried i might be considered too young to get a job(next summer i will be 19) do they hire that young?

Hey Ben ... the minimum age for one of these jobs is 18, but there are some experience requirements, too, and so most people end up being at least a little bit older than that. It's not unheard of for a 19-year-old to get a lookout job, though. (If you have two years of college and some science classes, that can substitute for some of the work experience, which helps a lot.) Still, it definitely doesn't hurt to apply. They've pushed the application process quite a bit earlier this year, and many of the job applications for next summer are coming up this October! If you're at all interested, you should take a look at USA Jobs right now.

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