Lookout: A Letter from Elevation 7,200
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Lookout: A Letter from Elevation 7,200
A Montana Forest Service fire lookout writes home from a 14-foot cab perched above the Bitterroot. What's it like to spend five months alone on a mountain, watching for smoke, rationing propane, and calling your wife on a radio-telephone that the whole ranger district can hear? This letter tells you.
There is a 14-by-14-foot room perched at 7,218 feet in the Bitterroot range. One window faces every direction. One brass instrument sits in the center. And on most summer days, one person stands on the catwalk outside, doing slow circles, looking for smoke.
This week's letter comes from that room — postmarked Sula, Montana, July the ninth. It's from Dale, a Forest Service fire lookout in his third season on Rye Creek peak. He writes about the radio-telephone that the whole district can overhear, the pack-mule supply run that has to last all summer, the morning light that turns the fire finder gold, and the way a bad July thunderstorm turns out to be the best afternoon in months. He also writes about mangoes. At some length.
The letter reads slow because that's how it was written — from a place where time moves differently, and noticing is the whole job.
The Last Frontier Mailbag
Every two weeks, letters from North Americans who live where most North Americans never go — Alaska oil-rig workers, Wyoming ranchers, Maine lobster boat captains, Montana forest lookouts.
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