DemoTex's Deschutes NF Dispatch #2 (text only)

[DemoTex]

After ten very busy days on the East Butte lookout, I finally had a day off yesterday. I spent the night in Bend (Oregon) and got my first real shower in almost two weeks. I also managed to get my wireless internet card activated, so I have Verizon internet access at the lookout. Cell phone reception is still an issue. I can manage to make calls from the lookout catwalk, if I hold my phone just right, but I can’t take incoming calls.

The days have been very long. On Memorial Day weekend we had several thousand OHVers (off-highway vehicles .. aka ATVs) in the Deschutes National Forest using the USFS-maintained OHV trails. On the Saturday before Memorial Day we had over 500 OHVs climb 6500' East Butte to the lookout. It was a madhouse. The talcum-like dust was terrible. I started calling the OHVs “converters” .. they convert fuel into noise (and dust). On Sunday a fire broke on an OHV trail about seven miles north of the lookout.

I think it was on Memorial Day that the lightning storms fired up. Since then, we have had lightning every day and lightning-sparked fires every day. Several nights ago there were over 500 lightning strikes in our district. It was an awesome fireworks display. However, early the next morning I was calling “smokes” of the lightning fires. “Sleeper” fires might take a couple of days to put up smoke.

On May 31 we had two epic storms. The first, a line of severe thunderstorms, rolled over the spine of the Cascades at mid-afternoon. Then it got very, very calm. I knew a second wave was coming because the lookouts to the west could see it boiling over the mountains. During that calm, I had a bizarre “Twilight Zone” experience. As I scanned around to the western sector, something caught my eye. It was a face looking at me from about ten feet from the tower, at my exact eye level .. a “happy” face. It was floating ever-so-slowly south. It took me a second or so to realize that it was an “escaped” grocery store type helium party balloon. A big yellow happy face. It floated off, over the southern edge of the butte and in the general direction of California!

The second big storm Sunday afternoon was gale force wind-driven rain. No lightning. Just high wind, heavy rain, and zero visibility from the lookout. Yesterday I drove into Bend and left my relief lookout to deal with another afternoon of thunderstorms.

I’m back in the lookout tower now. I drove out early this morning with provisions for another week in the wilderness. Today is an ideal day for a fire lookout. The tower is in the clouds, so the visibility is zero, and a cold (it is 47-degrees) steady rain is drenching the forest. The USFS radios are quiet and Nick and I are cozy in the heated lookout tower.

It's dark now. I have the 2kw generator running to charge the battery bank (no solar charging today). I've got two computers going .. one on DU and one playing Roy Orbison's "Black and White Nights" concert DVD. I'm sipping an Australian sparkling Shiraz. Nick twitches and yips in his doggie dream on the bed.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Just this ........

I envy you. I envy you so much. Some of my best times were spent in deep woods, in a pup tent.

The air was sweet, the sky was wide open, there will never be that many stars, ever, anywhere, and the whole world was asleep.

Nothing was ever like that again, but I'm glad I had so much time in those woods, under the forgiving sky that showed itself to me, all those stars, all that sparkling air, all that rustling in the brush, me and the earth.

Thank you for this, DT, and, well, just thank you for this .................

[stevedeshazer]

2. Good to hear, man

Give Nick a scratch behind the ears for me.

It's been an unusually dry spell for Oregon in May and into June.

By next week, we'll have more rain. But after that, I think you're gonna be busy through September.

Good luck and enjoy.

[TahitiNut]

3. Give Nick some scratches behind the ears for me, Mac. Enjoy, bro'!

:thumbsup: :fistbump: Don't let Charlie sneak through the wire. :patriot:

[Suich]

4. Shiraz AND Roy Orbison???

How lucky can you get? Sounds like you've had a pretty eventful initiation!

At first I thought the "happy face" was going to turn out to be some kind of strange mini-cloud formation!

It was 88 degrees here today...20 degrees above normal. Could be a brutal summer.

Rock on!

:hi:

[Thothmes]

5. A kinder gentler era

When I worked a tower, FS regulations no alcoholic beverages, no fire arms. The tower had no electricity. Only heat was the propane stove used for cooking. Really impressive when the area was clouded over thought. If the cloud bank was was lower than the tower, looked like a white ocean extending as far as the eye could see. The big islands in the white sea had names like Jefferson, the Sisters, Hood, Adams, St.Helens, Rainer. Magnificent site.

[DemoTex]

9. I can normally see Sisters and Hood .. but not this evening.

Rain obscures all quadrants except to the south. Ft. Rock and Christmas Valley are actually in the sunshine right now. Beautiful.

When were you a lookout? My boss basically said that the lookout is my home and, when off duty, I can do anything in the lookout I would do in my home. In fact, he and his boss came out today with some mail and asked my permission to ascend the tower stairs.

Some lookouts have firearms. I feel no need for a gun. There are layers and layers of USFS gates and locks between me and the public. And few wild animals of the dangerous variety.

The USFS is not the tight-ass organization it used to be. Practicality and youth abound. I am impressed. After all, it was the old USFS that tried to squelch Mann Gulch and that black-listed Gary Snyder. There was only one way to go from there.

BTW: When Gary Snyder (Pulitzer-winning poet) packed into Sourdough in Washington in the 1950s, the only food he carried was 50 pounds of rice and a gallon of soy sauce. Tonight I am having saffron rice with a garnish of soy sauce. Life is simple.

[Thothmes]

11. I worked Lookout Mountain tower (elev 3660 ft.)

the summers of 1966,67 & 68 while going to College. Summer of 65 worked on a 12 man fire suppression crew. The tower was located in the Mt. St Helens Ranger District of the Gifford Pinchot NF in South West Washington. It was located in what was called the Yacolt Burn. Because of very hi fire danger during the summer months the Burn area was closed to all industrial and recreational uses. Would see my packer once every two weeks. That was the only person I talked face to face with during the entire summer. The FS in their magnanimity would allow us five minutes on the radio after 8pm to talk to any of the other four manned towers in the GPNF. I was paid $1.25 an hour for 8 hours a day Monday through Friday. I had Saturday morning off but had to be back at the tower at noon because I went on the clock for four hours Saturday PM. I was also on the clock on Sunday morning until noon. Basically, once at the tower, I did not leave it until early September. The tower had been built in the early thirties, was an L4 type on 20 ft stilts.
No water or electriciy. Packer would bring up five 20 gal milk cans of water that had to last the two weeks until he returned. Cooking was on a three burner propane stove. Did have a small Japanese transistor radio which picked up some of the radio stations in Portland Oregon. Read a lot of books.
Before moving up to the tower in late May, I had left several numbered boxes of books at the packers house at the ranger station. When I give the office my food requrements for the next two week, would tell them which box of books to bring up next. Look back on the experience and consider it the best job I ever had.

[Loki]

6. Thanks for taking me back..........

the summers I spent camping and canoeing in the Missouri Ozarks. I need to get back to that simpler life, I yearn for it. You are blessed DemoTex. Stay safe, keep safe and enjoy your moment in this beautiful world we call home.

Peace

Lee

[WilliamPitt]

7. I can't imagine how good the air must taste.

:toast:

[leftyclimber]

8. Lemme guess about the OHV guy...

no spark arrestor? You must been blowing dust out of your sinuses for a couple of days at least. Ugh!

Spent this weekend and Monday out on the Monongahela NF. Monday was glorious -- a warm, sunny day on top of Spruce Knob (highest point in WV, gorgeous vistas of rolling green hills). Didn't have to wear raingear for the first time all weekend, didn't have to put on my gaiters to set up the traffic counter. Had a hummingbird try to "eat" my bright yellow hat a couple of times, fawns and baby squirrels all over the place. Met a lot of nice people and got some yummy cupcakes from one couple. It's a great office up there, as is yours, I'm sure.

But it still doesn't smell like sage and juniper here. I can smell it every time you post, along with the flinty desert dust and the ozone crackling in my sinuses during the storms.

And aren't real showers great after you haven't had one for a while? ;)

Thanks, DT.

[DemoTex]

10. Link to post with photos

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5767009

[robdogbucky]

12. Yo, Demo

Like most here, I also envy your summer job.

I worked for the Circus (USFS as it was known back then)in '81 and '82, when St. Ronnie shit-canned the PATCO employees in the first official wave of the ongoing war on organized labor. Being in the employ of the feds at the time, all of us part-timers that fought fire during the season shared the anxiety with the career USFS professionals, seeing it as an ominous move. I was very impressed when I joined up (for the money) and then found out how dedicated and well-trained the USFS professionals are. At the time being a 30-year old and among the oldest members of our crew, we were dispatched out of Davis, CA and attached to the Mendocino NF with the Chico crew. We had an initial very busy season in '81. We then evolved in two seasons from being strictly an AD crew doing a lot of mop-up after things were contained, to being a new entity developed by an inspired overhead member from Chico, who saw how effective we had become in our performance reviews and in the field, created a new class of crew just for us, the Super II crew. We had some initial attack duties and it was a feather in our cap to be amongst the first to show up when camps were first mobilized. It was a gas to work with the Shots and Jumpers and we had lots of good times with all the hard work. It paid to be among a crew of healthy college aged kids that had a zest for conditioning, instead of something else. Our health and enthusiasm were main reasons we excelled at our jobs.

I now live in the Bay Area, but occasionally camp, fish and visit lookouts in and around Cal. My last visit was to Badger Mt. lookout, east of Lassen. Spectacular. Being a fly fishing nut, I have always felt more at home outside than inside and my mate used to laugh when I returned from long fires in the old days, unable to sleep with a roof over my head. She would find me in the back yard in my bag in the morning. I am of your generation and was wondering if I shouldn't see if there are any opportunities for me to do what you are doing. I would love it, but my wife might find it a hard idea to digest. And so it goes, the ongoing conflict of desire and duty.

We certainly have had this weird shift in weather patterns, with the early season strikes like last June (man, it was weird to fish at altitude on the solstice with smokes and fire personnel all around the mountain roads). It ominously looks like it is a redux this year, with current strange storm impulses dotting the landscape down here in Cal. I plan on doing my annual solstice trip, this time taking a friend that has never fly fished for real, and I wonder if it will also turn out to be an educational fire trip as well. I used to love going to sleep at night in late summer in the mountains, listening to the forest net on my boombox that had shortwave bands.

Oregon is beautiful and I have fought fire all around the mountain west. In our training back then it was told that the percentage of fires started by USFS employees was startlingly high. Fire pay you know. Actually, if I recall, as high as 25% were intentional by professionals or at least suspected to be. Professionals can conceal an ignition point much better than your average firebug Joe. Weather and human negligence in the wild accounted for the vast majority of fires. What an awful reality to realize as we saw in the Arizona and I believe a Colorado fire in the last few years, that was actually the case. Of course there is never any psychological screening for such positions, just as their isn't for military jobs. It's come one, come all. There was the famous story told to all Fire Science classes back then of the Cal Hot Shot crew from the Eel River or somewhere like that with asbestos forests for their home area, that mysteriously had a high number of turn-around fire calls. Turns out that there was a crew member throwing out Fuse-Es (road flares) off the engine when they were driving back to base from assignments. Needless to say they had a high number of calls waiting for their return and they finally caught him doing it. Sad reality. There was a fire I worked in Utah wherein the psycho arsonist was actually starting fires on the edges while we were still suppressing the initial blazes he had set a week earlier. Weird what some people become. Thank dog there are folks like you that care and are richly rewarded for their service. I probably would do it for free. We always looked on fires like getting paid for camping out and having the adventure of a lifetime.

Keep posting updates as you work your lookout throughout the season. Maybe I will take a trip up to Bend to see you sometime later this year. That would be a hoot. The browns in the Deschutes are special too.

Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

[Blue_Tires]

13. kick...

great stuff...i always wondered what that life was like...how long do you go without talking to another person face-to-face?

[robdogbucky]

14. Dem, you may be busy now

from the looks of Northwest radar.

Or, you may get busy later this afternoon.

Couple of cells rotating through that make it look light you might get some action, especially the one that just passed Medford heading northeast.

Gotta love it, live speculation on real time weather during fire season with a lookout in the adjacent state.


Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky