KEEPING WATCH

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:16

[Bill] Yeah. So. So he went out to this McConnell Mountain lookout. And at that time, I don’t have a picture of it in my phone. The Alidade was just a map board on a staff out on a rock pile. So you couldn’t be out there in a lightning storm. I mean, you just couldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere.

00:00:27:18 - 00:00:48:14

[Bill] And so the other lookouts would get first discoveries on him all the time. And in that those days, that was kind of important. But that didn’t happen to you, you know? And so he built a little thing. They called it a cupola, but it was probably about six feet square, maybe smaller our of logs. And he put it out on this rock pile.

00:00:48:17 - 00:01:08:12

[Bill] So that he could go out there and not be in the weather and the rain and the blowing and the lightning and all of that. So the Ranger came up. Ranger’s name was Ed McKay, and he came up. Pop was there, and Pop said he saw him ride enough. He could see his hat on him. You know, he should gradually top and out over the ridge.

00:01:08:12 - 00:01:27:19 [Bill] You can see the hat. And pretty soon the guy and then the horse. So and so he went down and put the coffee on. In those days when the ranger came, you always, you’d have a peach pie or something. You made out of cans and fruit for the ranger and you’d have a coffee on. It’s kind of tradition.

00:01:27:21 - 00:01:49:29

[Bill] But Ed didn’t even stop. He just rode right out on to that, looking at that and so Pop though oh boy, you know, he didn’t know for sure what went and talked, Ed, And it said, you know, this is totally why I did it. And he’s such a damn good idea, Bud. He said, Let’s write down some measurement and I’ll send up some windows and lightning protection.

00:01:50:02 - 00:02:13:12

[Bill] So he ended up having this little place he could go, and that stayed there ‘till what was it? I think it was 2013. Meanwhile, Pop, you know, was the lookout for about five seasons, four or five, and then worked trail crews and worked his way up and went to war and became the ranger and then went to Washington and all that other stuff.

00:02:13:12 - 00:02:47:23

[Bill] And he came back. The first thing he did when he came back as part of that story, he went back to took a backpacking trip and went up over Fish Lake and then McConnell Mountain and all around back just to get back in the country and kind of, you know, get to feel again. And but anyway, this all gone on till we get up to about 2013 and a lightning strike comes down on California point which is maybe 8 to 10 miles away from McConnell, maybe a little further.

00:02:47:25 - 00:03:16:09

[Bill] And they put jumpers on it and then decided not to staff it. And it took, I believe, 21 days for that was called the California Point Fire to work its way down Wounded Doe Ridge until it finally got to the point where McConnell Mountain was on it. And by then there was some concern about people that knew the country that they knew that old lookout was up there.

00:03:16:12 - 00:03:45:09

[Bill] And but bottom line was it burned down in the California Point fire. So the interesting thing about that is the I wrote a little article about it and I called it “The Circle of Life and Fire”, cause he was the guy that built that in 1935 so that he could better manage fires and get them out faster and all of that kind of stuff in the wilderness because that’s what you did at the time.

00:03:45:13 - 00:04:08:22

[Bill] And then he went through his whole career and eventually changed how people looked at it back in the wilderness. And they did leave. It burned and it burned down the very thing that he built so that he could fight fire better in the wilderness, just kind of like. And so yeah, yeah. Ask about him in that story and how would he think about that.

00:04:08:22 - 00:04:35:19

[Bill] And I think that he would think that’s just fine, you know, that just natural and that’s kind of what happened to the thing. Unless he’d have been sitting on a lookout like some of us were and heard all of the screwing around they did when they didn’t even know it was there, you know, And it just the lookout is saying, hey, you know, guys, we’re going to lose McConnell Mountain.

00:04:35:21 - 00:04:41:02

[Bill] And yeah, it was just kind of a what’s the word for cluster?