Fire Lookout Life: Basic Essentials

[Bo Zarts]

Pinyon Peak Lookout - Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness
Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho
©2024 Bo Zarts Studio

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Coffee and bacon are certainly the basics, my dear Bo!

This B&W photo really brings home just how basic these elements are.

[2naSalit]

3. It's truly the whole thing right there.

It's what I have most mornings, I add pancakes or toast and a piece of fruit just to spice things up.

Great photo. Merry Christmas!

[Mr.Bill]

4. Looks like all anyone needs, really.

Great picture.

[GeoWilliam750]

5. I really like your stove.....

[Bozvotros]

6. Jack Kerouac would be happy to know a kindred spirit was keeping watch.

You just need an old underwood typewriter and a roll of shelf paper.

[ChazInAz]

8. When I am in need of a serenity infusion...

I just read the closing of "Dharma Bums".
Kerouac's best writing!

[Bozvotros]

12. I will have to read that again.

It's been a very long time. Kerouac inspired me to hitchhike twice from Indiana to California and the Pacific Northwest. Not to mention the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and Florida (the worst trip I ever had.)

[Bo Zarts]

10. When I started working this particular lookout there was a poem by Gary Snyder thumb-tacked to a window post ..

Someone had written it out by hand on pale blue paper. Snyder worked Sourdough Peak lookout while Kerouac was in Desolation Peak. Philip Whalen was in a third lookout in the same ranger district. That fire season there were three "Beat Poets" working fire lookouts on three of the most majestic peaks in the Upper Skagit region of the North Cascades.

But Gary Snyder only worked one season because the US Forest Service found out about his previos affiliation with the "Wobblies," and he was blackballed from any future work with the USFS. But his boss loved him: "That's one calm son-of-a-bitch." The mule skinner that packed Gary in on mules at the first of the season said that all Snyder took to eat was a fifty pound bag of rice and a gallon of soy sauce. Snyder melted snow for water to cook the rice.

At age 94, Snyder is one of the few Beat Poets who is still alive. He is the only one alive of the three (Kerouac, Whalen, and Snyder) who worked fire lookouts that season in the early 1950s.

[Bozvotros]

11. Wow, I didn't realize there were 3 beat poets on fire lookouts.

I think Edward Abbey took some turns up there too. You are in some fine rarefied artistic air up there.

[Bo Zarts]

14. Yes, Edward Abbey did indeed work a fire lookout or two .. one in the Tonto National Forest of Arizona.

Abbey's novel "Black Sun" is about the fire lookout life.

[ChazInAz]

13. Now there's some info I didn't have!

Three Beats on the mountain tops.
And Japhy Ryder is still with us!

[malthaussen]

7. No eggs? No bread?

Bread is the staff of life, after all.

-- Mal

[justaprogressive]

9. don't forget chilli!

then add bacon!

I'm sure you'll have a glorious "Silent Night" tonite!