KEEPING WATCH

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[Chris] You’ve kind of already answered this question in some ways, but, um, what was it that that drew you both to, um, the job of the lookout to be out in, especially to do it together, um, at Pilot Peak?

[Jim] Well, my original inspiration was some of the Adirondack Hermits back in the Adirondacks. Noah John Rondeau and, uh, French.

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[Jim] Louie was this guy’s name. And these were guys that just got sick of society and moved out into the woods and hunted and fished for their food. And that always fascinated me when I was a youngster. And so, so yeah, I, I was really drawn towards that. And that’s what got me up on Hadley for the first time, uh, the Hadley Mountain Fire Tower in the Adirondacks there.

00:01:09:09 - 00:01:45:04

[Jim] And when I was there, I started, I started getting into writers like Jack Kerouac and that gang, Philip Whalen and, and, uh, Gary Snyder, And they all did the fire lookouts. Um, and there they were also kind of associated with the university that I went to, to Naropa University. But those guys really inspired me as well. So that was kind of the, the second wave when we met, um, you know, basically we were working restaurant jobs, stuff like that.

00:01:45:04 - 00:02:02:21

[Jim] And I was like, Hey, I have this idea, you know, we ought to, you know, go do a fire lookout. And, you know, if we’re not going to make a ton of money being, you know, working in a restaurant, we might as well not make a ton of money and, you know, sit on top of a mountain and, you know, do something interesting like that.

00:02:02:23 - 00:02:20:02

[Jim] And yeah, so we got the job and…

[Caroline] It was amazing. Yeah. I had never even known that there were fire lookouts, to be honest with you, until we got together. But when we had met, we, you know, we were both living in the mountains and was like, you know, you were in a wall tent at 10,000 feet.

00:02:20:02 - 00:02:43:10

[Caroline] And I was in this little ramshackle little cabin trailer, you know, just loving being in the woods and stuff. And we both knew that we could, you know, kind of rough it in a certain regard. And we like that aspect of things. And then when we got together, we lived in a little cabin with, you know, no running water, you know, just solar, just, you know, a teeny little things that we knew we could handle that.

00:02:43:13 - 00:03:08:03

[Caroline] But then, yeah, when you got the job as a lookout, that was really exciting. And I remember before we went up, we came across a quote from Edward Abbey that said something like, you know, I’m totally paraphrasing, and he says it much better. But basically, like, you know, if you’re meant to be with someone and if you live in a 14 by 14 foot, you know, one room, a little place, you know, and like, you know, you’re meant to be together.

00:03:08:03 - 00:03:28:07

[Caroline] And we both had that like, alright, like, can we do this? Like, we knew we knew we loved each other. We knew we wanted to be together. Like that wasn’t a question, but that was kind of like our little, like, underlying like, can we do this? You know? And so yeah, so it was really exciting to do that, actually.

00:00:09:22 - 00:00:35:10

[Jack] So you’ve, you both have kind of described the look out as the site of rebirth and maybe even a kind of spiritual death at times, almost like, like a snake shedding its skin, this like periodic renewal.

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[Jack] Have you, have you found yourselves missing that since you’ve stopped being lookouts? Definitely.

[Jim] Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was just saying that the other day, just, you know, because we’re going all the time now, you know, we’re like, we’ve just got with the farm and all of that, you know, we wake up and, you know, uh, in our days full until you fall asleep with your boots on at the end of the night, you know?

00:01:00:29 - 00:01:34:04

[Jim] So, um, yeah, just night. I often say, you know, I wish they were just like the fires, but if you could just brush, just kind of just get that, that time. And so, yeah, I do miss, miss that opportunity to remake myself, um, and kind of just press the reset button is what we always used to say. You know, just pull the plug on whatever you’re doing and, and, and that’s it for, for three months.

00:01:34:04 - 00:01:57:22

And, um, yeah, you come out the other side a little, a little different.

[Caroline] Yeah. And I think we’ll say it to each other where it’s like I could really use them like, look at time right now, you know, we know what that means, you know, like, you know, and, and the hard thing is, it’s it’s really it’s almost impossible to recreate that experience, you know?

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[Caroline] And I mean, when we were up there, like, you know, I think like we both I mean, like speaking for myself, I, I think that, you know, we felt like like this is like the best job ever for that reason, you know, because you can you can be yourself. And then also, you know, work hard and and try and be good at what you’re doing and at the same time, like value that that space and so, you know, it’s hard to find something that you know, is like that and values that you know, I mean, you know, in our society, you’re supposed to be productive every moment and just do, you know, going on going

00:02:34:04 - 00:02:53:13

[Caroline] And on the look out, you’re more like there to be like a mountain lion, you know, like you’re just kind of there to sit and wait and watch and then pounce, you know, when the time is right. And there are very few things that are kind of like that. And in that that waiting time is where, you know, that’s that’s pretty precious.

00:02:53:14 - 00:03:18:28

[Jim] Yeah. Yeah. And I, I did a lot more reading up there. I mean, I probably read, you know, quite a bit, you know, and hefty ones, you know, and be able to think, think about it, you know, and really, really digest it, you know, and it doesn’t happen quite the same way here. You know, I’ll read a couple of pages and then, you know, and then that’s just about it.

00:03:18:28 - 00:03:44:24

[Jim] But, um, but I look out and look forward to that time. She’d go up there with a huge stack of books of what you wanted to dive into. And, um, yeah, yeah, that was, that was really nice aspect of it.

[Caroline] Yeah. And I mean, we were definitely on like that end of the spectrum, like there’s some lookouts that like to go down to town and like to, you know, visit people or like, you know, like having people come up and stuff.

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[Caroline] And we’re always like, look at. like, you know, we want to be as far away from people. We want to, like, get as much food as we can have so we don’t have to come down to town, you know, like we just cherish that space so much that we just did everything that we could just to try and hold on to that space because it is so rare.

00:04:04:19 - 00:04:30:25

[Caroline] But yeah, we we definitely we definitely I think if we could live dual lives, you know, if we if there were, you know, there a way to kind of like have this and unfortunately you can’t have goats and and do it like at the same time. But if we could we would, we would definitely do it.

[Jim] And a big impetus for us leaving you know look out was just we were apart for three four months a year that got old, you know.

00:04:30:25 - 00:04:57:04

[Jim] And when you start, you know, you just, uh, you start getting older and you’re like, Whoa, shoot. We’re missing out on everything all summer together. That’s kind of not fun. So, yeah. So that’s nice to be back together and all of that. Yeah. You know, Uh, yeah. I mean, if I didn’t have all these creatures to take care of, you know, and I still think about it, you know, I.

00:04:57:06 - 00:05:20:05

[Jim] I’ve had opportunities to do, you know, stints on different mountains and whatnot. And, you know, I’ve been invited back to do that, you know, So that might just happen where I go up and do a month or a couple of weeks and relieve somebody. But, uh, but yeah, our life has definitely changed. Uh, you know, with, with all these animals.

00:05:20:05 - 00:05:57:17

[Jim] So, um, yeah,

[Caroline] and just something that I would add too, I think what we were both also feeling with a certain insecurity about our roles as lookouts in the Forest Service, too, you know, where you feel like as a lookout, you’re kind of competing with the aircraft for fire detection, you know? So it’s almost like you almost have, like, this, like little, you know, game as a lookout where you’re like you’re trying to beat the planes, you know, because you know that the planes are like they have all the advantage, you know, in in so many ways, you know, they can kind of fly around and and get to where they want to go.

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[Caroline] So, you know, your advantage is just being on top of things so much, You know, you know, and and watching. But but yeah, we were just starting to get nervous about, you know, how long you know, how long the, uh, the Forest Service would, would keep doing that. And I think that’s where we always try to be low maintenance.

00:06:20:05 - 00:06:39:23

[Caroline] And that was always a big thing. Just like not, you know, not be a problem, you know, and just try and be really good and effective at what you’re doing. Because I think there’s tremendous value. I mean, we always feel like there is tremendous value, you know, in in in humans being up there and, you know, having that role.

00:06:39:23 - 00:07:11:17

[Caroline] But we were getting nervous whether, you know, the organization would still keep valuing it.

[Jim] And we got the Bergdorf gig. So that was pretty hard to pass up. Uh, and Bergdorf is, you know, right near the mountains. So it was an opportunity for us to live in those mountains full time, year round. And, and, uh, that was also the difficult part about the look out was you’d have to come back to society and try and find a job, Right?

00:07:11:17 - 00:07:27:18

[Jim] You know, And who wants to hire somebody for, you know, you know, once you got settled, you’d have another four or five months, you know, where you’re you’re looking for work and no one would want to hire you because they knew you were going to go back to look out and so that got to be a little challenging.

00:07:27:18 - 00:07:49:13

[Jim] And, uh, and Bergdorf was just too cool to pass up, you know? It’s really neat spot.

[Caroline] So that’s what we always said. Like, you know, we would have to find something that was like as good as the lookout to leave because we never wanted to leave. We just we really we really felt like we wanted to do it forever, you know?

00:07:49:16 - 00:08:24:24

[Jack] Can you just elaborate on, on, on what you think is, is lost in the transition away from the human fire lookout toward aerial surveillance as the primary means of fire detection.

[Caroline] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, I think there’s so many different aspects of it, you know, um, you know, I mean, obviously just like a cultural heritage, you know, is, is just really important to, you know, have the history there and someone maintaining that.

00:08:24:24 - 00:08:53:14

[Caroline] But, but having a person out in the woods, you know, we, we found ourselves in different situations being needed as communication relays for you know for different like plane crashes that were in the backcountry and communication would break down and there would only be a lookout to be able to make that happen. So we both found ourselves in those positions at different points in time.

00:08:53:16 - 00:09:23:22

[Caroline] You know, also, there would always be, you know, people getting lost or, you know, there were always incidents of of other, you know, campers or just people in the back country that just, you know, needed somebody there, you know, And whether that’s like as a communications relay or just as as somebody that can help, you know, you know, because it’s so difficult when you’re out there, you know, if someone breaks a leg, you know, how are they going to you know, notify somebody?

00:09:23:22 - 00:09:57:25

[Caroline] And, you know, when you don’t have you don’t have cell service and you don’t have a sat phone. So so anyway, there there, every summer, there was always something that would come up. There’s always emergencies that were human related, definitely. And there’s you know, and then too, you’re up there monitoring all the conditions. So, for instance, you know, you get a thunderstorm or, you know, a storm system coming through and you see the activity of lightning.

00:09:57:25 - 00:10:16:29

[Caroline] And obviously lightning maps can pick that stuff up, too. But you’re aware of like, you know, what really got hit. You know, there’s like a little bolt here and then there’s one that just brrrr. You know, you could see when something gets really zapped and you’re like, I got to keep my eye over there and you know that it’s really dry.

00:10:16:29 - 00:10:34:20

[Caroline] Or, you know, you’re kind of aware of of what the the conditions are out there. You know, you’re you’re you’re visual eyes out there. You know, we we get calls from, you know, our managers saying like, you know what you know, like, what are the clouds looking like? What you know, what are the conditions looking like out there?

00:10:34:20 - 00:11:04:29

[Caroline] You know, And you’re the eyes for, you know, the office and, you know, perhaps perhaps you could get a camera and and get a visual, but you’re not getting the whole experience, you know, And I think a person could kind of, you know, if they’re aware and and, you know, can communicate effectively that, you know, you can just give more of an accurate description as to what’s going on in the backcountry in some of these areas.

00:11:04:29 - 00:11:17:05

[Caroline] You know, and planes are expensive. You know, aircraft is really expensive to get out there. And humans are actually can be fairly inexpensive. Yeah, yeah. Considering. But