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Yours. It says recording.

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Okay, cool. Yeah. Moved away for a second so you can see my John Muir wall.

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Doo, doo, here I come. Welcome,

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Lookout, friends. My name is Kjell Petersen.

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I'm with the Northwest Montana Lookout Association, and I'm here today with Beth Hodder, who's also a member of our association.

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And we have the privilege of doing a oral history interview with a long time lookout,

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Leif Haugen, welcome. Thanks, Kjell.

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Hi, Leif. Good to have you. Yeah, this is going to be fun.

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Not only has Leif spent about the last 28 years staffing lookouts around northwest Montana, for the last eight or nine,

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he has served as manager of the Lookout Volunteer Program on the Flathead.

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And that takes into three lookouts.

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Cooney Lookout down on the Swan, Firefighter Lookout along the Hungry Horse Reservoir, and Cyclone Lookout up the North Fork.

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And both Beth and I have served in that volunteer program off and on during the years.

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So we know a cool program it is and how fortunate people that are in that program are to escape society for

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ten days or a week during the summer. Spend time in outer space in near zero gravity.

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So hopefully, hopefully, Leif's going to talk about that some more before we're done.

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So before we get started.

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Leif, tell us about your childhood, where you grew up, how you ended up in Northwest Montana, and what possessed you to become a lookout addict.

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So I grew up in Hopkins, Minnesota, suburban Minneapolis.

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I'm sorry, what was the name? Hopkins, Minnesota.

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And suburban Minneapolis and a pretty standard suburban childhood in my family.

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And in high school I started both backpacking and reading quite a bit, which included Kerouac and at Abbey, a couple of pretty well-known lookouts.

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And that kind of got me interested in lookouts, but not knowing much about them being a minnesota kid.

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And at the same time, I started coming out to Montana in the summers to backpack and the actual beartooth.

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And that was really my introduction to the mountains.

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I'd done some stuff up in the boundary waters, but really that was my first mountain backpacking experience and I didn't go to college right away.

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I did the Appalachian Trail after I graduated from high school,

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and then I traveled a bunch, worked a bunch, and some of my travels went through Missoula.

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And I thought it was a neat campus.

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And found out they had reciprocity with Minnesota.

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So it was really a reasonable place to go to college and ended up in college in Missoula.

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And that was really my introduction to lookouts and also where I met Heidi, my wife, and that is she's a local kid.

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And so that's kind of how we ended up in the Flathead as well was after college we didn't necessarily I was already a lookout at that point,

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and Heidi was working for the Forest Service, too,

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and it was just logical and easy to come back to her hometown and home base and and start a life post-college together.

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Well, that kind of sums it up best. Any questions? I don't think so at this point.

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Okay. So I think you came by this whole addiction pretty easily.

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I had a similar situation coming from Iowa and working for the Forest Service my first summer and then became totally addicted to lookouts.

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So why don't we. Why don't I toss the ball to your back leaf and you start talking about your first lookout?

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Oh, that was in 94. Yep.

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Yeah, 1994. My first look out was Mont Morel on the Seeley Lake Ranger district of the Lolo National Forest.

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And interesting, I mean, a lot of times with lookouts, it's you know, the challenge is to get your first lookout your first lookout position.

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And I got kind of lucky in the sense that when I was in college in Missoula.

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I was an English and environmental studies major, but I did have to take one or two science classes, which I wasn't real excited about,

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but I ended up in a forestry class that was very interesting and made friends with

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a woman who was a Forest Service employee and she was back getting her degree.

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The Forest Service Center there, too, to get her degree so she could expand horizons for the Forest Service.

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And we were out to dinner one night. And being you know where lookouts because of Kerouac and and and Abby I asked her

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if they still were staffing lookouts and she said she gave me a funny look like.

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You know, I could see you being a lookout. And I said, Yeah, that sounds really interesting.

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You said, Well, only if you're serious am I going to make some calls for you.

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And I said, Well, yeah, I am.

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And so the next day, she showed up to class and had three different phone numbers for me, and she had contacted all three people.

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So they were expecting calls for me.

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And one of them basically got me the job through the application process, obviously on the C Lake District at Mount Mira.

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So I got the job, which I was very excited about.

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And often times, like they do in the government, I wasn't really told much other than I was going to be the new lookout.

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So on day one, I arrived at the ranger station with a backpack full of gear,

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thinking I was going right to lookout that day without knowing I had a full week of orientation to go through.

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And then the second week I was going to go through fire school.

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So it was pretty disappointing that first week spending the night in the bunkhouse and a day in the conference room at Silver Lake.

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Although I was still excited and they did sneak me up to look lookout to give me a sense of what I was in for and what was really fun.

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1994 was a very dry, busy year and it was already dry in late June and I had the fun part of going through.

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S1 nine. Your Introduction to Wildland Firefighting. Getting my red card is on the second the last day of fire school.

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The phone started ringing off the hook in the conference room we were in and they kept stopping and going and back.

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And finally I said, Everybody grab your gear, load up, you're going on fire.

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And on your second last day of first school, we pulled a 12 hour night shift.

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On a escaped logging burn that out of St Regis and spent the night fighting that

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fire and got back to the conference room the next day about ten in the morning,

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took coffee and donuts and they said, All right, you all pass.

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See you later. Have a good season.

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And so the next the next week was when I finally got to my morale, which would have been probably early July at that point.

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No swimming. That's pretty exciting that you got fire training and orientation because we talk to people every

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now and then who just showed up for work and immediately went to the lookout without any training.

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So that was pretty exciting for a young buck from Minnesota to just jump into it like that.

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Oh, absolutely. And to get that call, you know, in the middle of the guard school where you're just figuring you're sitting in a classroom,

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all of a sudden pull a night shift, really kind of brought it home and taught us a lot.

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And also for a lookout, it was great, too, because you kind of get a sense of what's happening on the ground a little bit to being a newbie.

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You know, as I'm sitting up on the lookout. So.

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And then because it was dry, I mean. The that season right off the bat, we were busy.

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I mean, I don't remember any big large project fires out of Seeley Lake that year,

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but on multiple occasions I had lightning come through and I had four or five, six, seven initial attacks going on at once.

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And as a rookie lookout,

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there were times where they were even telling me to prioritize the fires because it was so busy at the dispatch center that they just need to know

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what was closest to private property or town and which ones may or may not be growing rapidly or just a little spot for that's not doing much.

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And so I learned really quickly because I had to and I remember one of the big things I remember is one of those

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days I had multiple fires to report that were on an air tankers on one of the fires because it was growing rapidly.

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And I remember getting yelled at by the air tanker because I was stepping all over them on the radio and I didn't realize that they had

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far higher priority than my smoke report and I just had to learn some patience when there was a lot of stuff happening on the radio.

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And so Mountain Road was a great spot. It was a it's a drive up lookout right outside of Seeley Lake.

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So as I recall, it's about a 20, 25 mile drive from the townsite of Seeley Lake.

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And for me, what was interesting, I was 22 years old.

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I was in college and obviously on summer break, but I didn't have a car, so I would hitchhike from Missoula to the ranger station.

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What I did to help increase my chances of getting a ride was I always made sure I had my fire pack and hardhat on.

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And so when I'd hit the interstate to catch my ride to see, I never had to wait more than 5 minutes.

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And I always had a lot of questions for me. And, and then so I'd hitchhike to Seeley and they'd give me a Forest Service rig,

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and I could drive up to the lookout and then do my hitch and then come back and do it all over again and

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see what was neat about morale and especially being introduced to it was that I have a relief look too.

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So you always did get days off and one of the fun things I would do because of that.

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If it worked out. I covered Jean Miller shift to give him some days off at Blue Mountain as well.

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I did that a couple of times as well, so I got to know Gene pretty well that summer.

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And then obviously Virginia Vincent is another long time lookout legend who really I

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learned a lot by just listening to those two work on the radio and what they were up to.

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And those were really good people to spend a summer listening to to help figure out just what you're in for.

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Because I did get some pretty good training from the district, unlike a lot of lookouts for a receiver don't receive.

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But still really to me, that was the best part of it is the time you have to sit there and listen to how other lookouts perform the work,

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do the tasks, report the smokes, and then stay out of the way.

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At times, too. Gene Miller and Virginia Vincent were certainly two of my mentors in that regard.

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Is Virginia still around? No.

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Virginia died, I think a year and a half ago.

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What was nice was I had a lot of epiphany events. Both Gene, Virginia and I would go to a lot of the regional conferences.

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So I did what, South L.A.? Forest Fire Lookout Association.

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Yeah. So when they had their Western, I started going to those as a member and then they would have their Western conference in the first one.

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I think in 98 it was in Libby. And so at that point I started to get to know a lot of those people.

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And from then on, Jean and Virginia and I would talk oftentimes to see, Oh, are you going this year?

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And we could either travel together, figure some things out. So it was nice that later in their lives we still had a connection through lookouts,

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because I think Virginia, in the end, she had 40 plus years, I think, if not more, on Stark Mountain.

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Wow. And she probably quit doing Lookout from 2010.

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And then Jean has 50 years in. And he quit doing Blue.

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Oh, probably 2012 or 2015 in that time frame and then has been doing he's a volunteer look out for us as well in the Flathead County.

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So maintain that connection with him. We had a great time.

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We had a great time with Gene.

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We did three interviews with him, so we got three separate interviews on our website and I'm sure he could have talked for three more days.

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Yeah. And really so I mean, what was neat about morale was I was still a student.

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And because it was a busy fire year, is one of those fires where the governor, I think it is,

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announces that students who are in the firefighting effort don't have to go back to college in September,

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and that the professors had to have to accommodate firefighters and support us in keeping the work going.

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So what was neat for me was I would stay at Morrell for five days and then

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midweek usually I'd go down to class for two days and I was never so far ahead.

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I did an independent study project because at the lookout I could keep up really well on my schoolwork.

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And it was really nice to continue to make money as a student.

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And I staff morale into late October that year because we never really had a season ending event.

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So it was the longest season I've ever had as well in terms of coming out of there in late October.

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And it was a great introduction to working a look out in a busy season and working with fire because

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all summer there was either high potential or there was a lot going on with a lot of initial attacks.

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And there were probably a handful of.

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All 100 of 1000 acre fires in the area over the summer, but no real big project fires that summer in my neighborhood.

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And I think I mean, as far as morale goes.

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It was pretty straightforward in the sense I was so new, I didn't know what to think about it, and it was a great introduction.

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But after that fall, I knew I would go happily, go back to Mount Laurel.

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But I wanted something a little more remote for sure.

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And I was. I knew I was going to. Try and find a different look out, if possible, for the next season.

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And so over the winter I started that process.

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Which was very interesting because in the end, what I did is I called every Ranger district in Region one,

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every fire office, and asked them if they had staff lookouts, that they're going to have openings.

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And in the end, I had a few offers. One of which was Mount Henry on the Kootenay on the Three Rivers District.

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And the other one was Stormy Peak. On the salmon out of North Fork, Idaho.

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Uh, and I probably would have rather taken Stormy Peak than Mt. Henry at the time.

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But Mt. Henry and the Three Rivers Ranger District was where that friend I had told you about who helped get me the job.

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That's where she worked. So I would know somebody in Troy.

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Her and her family were very helpful and welcoming to me. And so I took the job on that district the following season.

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Anyway. I guess any other questions are more moral or do you have an aha moment that you remember from there?

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One thing that really clobbered you between the eyes.

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No, I think and I would say in the sense that right away I knew I loved it.

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I mean, right away I knew it was a job that I was going to enjoy, appreciate and likely want to do for a while.

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And I think, you know, having read about look out a bit through Kerouac and Abby and some of the other people who wrote about it,

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I picture more of the romance of being by yourself.

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The quiet sunrises and sunsets. But that first season,

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probably the biggest aha moment was I also enjoyed the fire aspect of it because I was busy and

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at times I probably didn't have as many as much of an opportunity for that Aha moment because.

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It was busy and the season had you kind of on edge in the sense that.

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You knew there was potential at any point.

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So I would just say the whole season brought it home to me for sure, though, that it was something I was going to continue to do.

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One of the thing that I thought of as I was saying that the one look at who did

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help train me and what I like is how this has changed in in the recent years.

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But. The one comment the rowdy ogden and another look on lolo told me was the second the patrol plane takes off from the airport.

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You're on the catwalk with your binoculars, looking at your whole world.

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And you do that until the patrol plane touches down,

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because that was a strong and healthy competition between the patrol plane and the lookout for spotting smokes.

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So that was the biggest thing I learned that year was it was fundamental to all

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the lookouts to do your best to not get scooped by the patrol plane for sure.

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And I think there's still a little bit of that for sure, but it's all pretty good natured.

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Now, what's nice is the aerial observers we work with.

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It's a way more of a team feeling, and we feel like we're working together.

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And it has made that relationship that much stronger and easier and better,

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really, for all of us in wildland fire, mostly in the detection of wildland fire.

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Yeah, your point is well taken, because when I went back to volunteering after the automated flight following system was on board,

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you never knew where the plane was. And it would just drive me crazy wondering when they were going to come over and catch a smoke in my area.

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So I understand what you're saying. Well, that's what it is.

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Well, go ahead. Go ahead, Beth. Well, I was just going to say the other thing with that, too, is that.

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You know, now you say there's a great relationship.

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And for a time there they were destroying lookouts.

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They were getting rid of people in lookouts and just using the aerial observers for the most part.

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So now some of the lookouts are coming back because there is a different way of looking on the ground like you were talking about.

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You know, so you have people in the lookout versus people in a plane and the people in the plane

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are there for a fly by where the people on the ground and the lookouts are there.

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And that makes a difference. Absolutely.

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And I think what was great for me was when I worked in Glacier Park as a lookout,

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I'd say probably a half dozen times I flew the patrol plane for the park.

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So I was their observer a half dozen times, which was a great lesson for me in the sense that it's just another tool like lookouts are.

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And it's it has its strengths and weaknesses, just like a lookout would as well.

192
00:21:03,030 --> 00:21:07,200
And that's where I think all of us come together, whether it's lookouts,

193
00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:13,190
patrol planes or any of the other or be the attack crew or, you know, any of us.

194
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:20,280
It's it's we're all in it together. And it's just all about, you know, working for each other to get the proper response,

195
00:21:20,670 --> 00:21:27,180
the best information together for the dispatchers, the fire managers and all the people involved.

196
00:21:27,180 --> 00:21:31,140
So we can hopefully have some success with what we're trying to accomplish.

197
00:21:31,700 --> 00:21:35,880
Right. So shall we move along the Mount Henry?

198
00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:41,580
Just mentioned four people who are members of the Northwest Association.

199
00:21:42,450 --> 00:21:48,600
Peter Kitch took a really awesome photo of Mount Henry that we used on our Christmas card this year.

200
00:21:48,620 --> 00:21:54,150
So if you didn't recognize that when you got the card or you know somebody who's in the organization,

201
00:21:54,390 --> 00:22:00,210
you can get a really awesome shot of Mount Henry. But anyway, fly at that when you're ready to leave.

202
00:22:00,630 --> 00:22:01,170
Okay.

203
00:22:02,310 --> 00:22:14,760
So Mount Henry was really a nice spot for me in the sense that I had some connections already in Troy, Montana, and and made some good friends there.

204
00:22:16,620 --> 00:22:23,910
I spent three years, 1995 to 1998, on that district as Mt. Henry Lookout.

205
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:31,409
And really what was what was great is Mt. Henry suited me wonderfully in the sense

206
00:22:31,410 --> 00:22:37,620
that it was a four mile walk and it was it was somewhat remote in terms of that.

207
00:22:38,130 --> 00:22:41,070
And but it was really quiet as far as visitation goes.

208
00:22:41,580 --> 00:22:48,870
The only people that I don't in the three years I was there, I saw one person that wasn't a local who has come to say hi.

209
00:22:49,170 --> 00:22:52,290
And really, I'd probably get in one hitch.

210
00:22:52,290 --> 00:22:55,649
I'd probably see her like every 10 to 14 days.

211
00:22:55,650 --> 00:23:01,800
I'd probably get one visit. It was really quiet. Beautiful spot, one of the highest peaks at the north end of the yak.

212
00:23:02,430 --> 00:23:11,340
And there was a lake you could get to and 20, 30 minutes of walking, swimming and really just a beautiful spot.

213
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:23,730
And what was nice though with as well with Three Rivers Ranger District out of Troy, they treated me as one of the fire crew, too.

214
00:23:23,910 --> 00:23:29,970
So when I wasn't staffing my lookout, I was involved with Fall Burning.

215
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:38,990
I went out a couple different roles to the Southwest on three week time to crew assignments.

216
00:23:39,990 --> 00:23:44,770
So I learned a lot about fire. And oftentimes, I was one of the last seasonals to be laid off.

217
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,020
So I would be involved with the fall burning, winterizing the pumps.

218
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:55,110
So I learned a lot about firefighting as well as being a lookout during those those times.

219
00:23:56,560 --> 00:24:00,420
And, you know, not that I ever wanted to supplant my look at work.

220
00:24:00,510 --> 00:24:05,760
But it created good foundation for me as as a lookout.

221
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:15,520
And continuing to be a lookout is learning a lot more about fire. So Mount Henry, though, was like I said, it was it was a beautiful spot to be.

222
00:24:16,420 --> 00:24:24,490
It seemed like in those days it was a spot that they oftentimes released that problem, grizzly bears.

223
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:36,730
So I had a few. Interesting. Interactions, let's say, with bears that weren't necessarily as worried about humans.

224
00:24:38,010 --> 00:24:45,430
And one time I went away for days off and I came back and a grizzly bear had been sharpening his claws on the legs of the lookout.

225
00:24:46,180 --> 00:24:53,680
And there were huge gouge marks in the legs where it had just been reaching up basically to the to the catwalk,

226
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:58,359
because it's a two story lookout and we're just working over the logs.

227
00:24:58,360 --> 00:25:05,420
It was really neat. And there's the almost like shards of wood at the base of the legs where it was.

228
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:11,769
It was impressive what they were doing. It made me think about what I would do in the night because it could have walked right up the stairs,

229
00:25:11,770 --> 00:25:15,330
too, if it wanted to, or if I was sitting on the catwalk.

230
00:25:15,340 --> 00:25:19,629
So and a number of times, too, there are really nice berries up there.

231
00:25:19,630 --> 00:25:23,980
So you could sit on the catwalk and watch a couple of different times.

232
00:25:23,980 --> 00:25:29,380
I had a saw with a couple of cubs sitting there eating berries right below me and you can hang out on the catwalk.

233
00:25:31,860 --> 00:25:41,519
Another really neat wildlife thing that happened there was the outhouse was just down in the saddle, about 100 yards from the lookout.

234
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:46,530
And I was sitting there in the morning doing my thing. And I also heard this noise.

235
00:25:46,530 --> 00:25:52,349
So I just kind of sat tight and waited and it just kept coming closer and closer.

236
00:25:52,350 --> 00:25:56,069
I figured it was a bear and I thought, Well, I'll just wait it out in here.

237
00:25:56,070 --> 00:26:01,620
And all of a sudden here comes a moose. And it just stuck its head right in the outhouse.

238
00:26:01,620 --> 00:26:06,990
Like it turned the corner and looked in. And it's it was probably a foot from my face and whoa.

239
00:26:07,260 --> 00:26:12,030
And it went, whoa. And that moose ran that ridge out really fast.

240
00:26:13,380 --> 00:26:15,060
But it was it was so cool.

241
00:26:15,060 --> 00:26:23,850
I wish I hadn't reacted the way I did because it would have been interesting if it would have sniffed me more like me, who knows what.

242
00:26:24,270 --> 00:26:29,219
But I once that mouse with Moose's face was that close to me.

243
00:26:29,220 --> 00:26:39,360
And I, I, I did. I jumped pretty good and wish I had a little more nerve, I guess, to wait it out.

244
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:43,940
You made an awesome video. Oh, yeah.

245
00:26:44,170 --> 00:26:50,470
Well, especially if somebody could have a third party, could have been watching it and both of our reactions to it.

246
00:26:54,180 --> 00:26:58,919
And so I guess my mom and Henry. Time.

247
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:00,840
Like I said to me, really, the.

248
00:27:02,100 --> 00:27:09,450
The big thing was, you know, those years really laid a foundation for wildland fire and me enjoying working in wildland fire.

249
00:27:10,740 --> 00:27:13,980
The lookout seasons were actually pretty slow, fire wise.

250
00:27:14,250 --> 00:27:21,060
That area had had huge and busy fires in 1994 and 95 to 97.

251
00:27:22,470 --> 00:27:27,270
There are always a couple initial attacks more later in late August, early September.

252
00:27:27,750 --> 00:27:39,870
But I never really felt too busy there. So there wasn't that much action on fire wise for those three years in the north end of the arc.

253
00:27:42,090 --> 00:27:45,209
One thing that was interesting, that's kind of when I started work with helicopters, too,

254
00:27:45,210 --> 00:27:52,980
because the lookout being for Miles in the Kootenay, he had a helicopter on for us back then and used it quite a bit.

255
00:27:52,980 --> 00:28:00,270
So it would fly my whole season worth of gear and whatever I wanted on my first day of of the summer.

256
00:28:00,990 --> 00:28:06,870
So it's like everything and including a belivet filled with potable water so that there was a spring for water.

257
00:28:06,870 --> 00:28:11,410
But oftentimes I would drink out of that belivet for quite a while and,

258
00:28:11,450 --> 00:28:14,790
and then at the end of the season, all your stuff and fly off the mountain as well.

259
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:22,959
So that was an interesting way to. Opportunity to get some experience with helicopters.

260
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:30,280
And it allowed me to live pretty well in the sense that if I was organized enough to get the right amount of stuff there for the season.

261
00:28:33,330 --> 00:28:41,560
You could you could live pretty well up there, even though those was walking. So you had to provide your own food and all that, or did they.

262
00:28:42,430 --> 00:28:47,020
Did did they provide food and they took it up for you or how did that work?

263
00:28:47,290 --> 00:28:52,060
Yeah. So they know you provided your own food, but they got it there for you.

264
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,049
And what was nice with that, with the Three Rivers Ranger district.

265
00:28:56,050 --> 00:29:03,520
So when I wasn't because I was a lookout, they considered the look out my housing so that, you know, my housing was covered.

266
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:09,850
And then when my lookout season was over, I got a free room in the bunkhouse because I was the lookout.

267
00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:14,890
And so I just would stay in the bunkhouse until they laid me off.

268
00:29:14,890 --> 00:29:23,020
And I was done working on the fire crew early in late season, but I provided all my own food.

269
00:29:23,020 --> 00:29:33,580
And then, like, if I went down for days off, when I came back, it was on me to bring out whatever personal gear I had to haul in my backpack.

270
00:29:36,890 --> 00:29:40,310
Okay. So we're sort of at the end of the fourth season.

271
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,450
Have you had a direct lightning strike on your lookout yet?

272
00:29:45,630 --> 00:29:52,500
Oh, that's a good Mount Henry story. One time at Mt. Henry.

273
00:29:52,530 --> 00:29:56,250
Well, so at that point, yes, but to me.

274
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:04,409
The times that I think I've been struck by lightning when it glows funny, it's a crash.

275
00:30:04,410 --> 00:30:11,160
Boom, bang all at once. It kind of knocks me senseless sometimes, so I can't even guarantee that I got hit.

276
00:30:12,300 --> 00:30:16,770
If they pull up the lightning map, I've had it where it's. There's a strike right on top of my lookout.

277
00:30:17,850 --> 00:30:25,710
But the best confirmation story that I have was one day I was I was home for days off,

278
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,840
and they called me at home and said, hey, we're getting the lightning today.

279
00:30:29,850 --> 00:30:37,589
Can you go back right now? So I got my stuff back together and left early and I was so out and I was walking up

280
00:30:37,590 --> 00:30:43,020
there and I could hear the patrol plane was flying and there was lightning in the area.

281
00:30:44,310 --> 00:30:52,560
And when I arrived at Lookout I check back in with dispatch, went back in service, and the patrol plane said, Hey, how's everything look up there?

282
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:59,540
It was everything. As it should be. And I said, Well, yeah, you know, and there's any radios working fine.

283
00:30:59,540 --> 00:31:00,109
Yeah. And they said,

284
00:31:00,110 --> 00:31:07,849
well the lookout took a direct strike strike 30 minutes earlier and they said it just turn the lookout into an x ray from a patrol plane.

285
00:31:07,850 --> 00:31:12,590
So they were flying by and they saw it get hit and just shot go black and white.

286
00:31:13,070 --> 00:31:16,610
And they thought it was either going to start on fire or.

287
00:31:17,510 --> 00:31:25,280
That my radio would be fried or and I couldn't even tell that it had been hit in any way whatsoever.

288
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:34,510
And which is a great testament to the grounding systems that so many that all the lookouts have in the sense that it took that direct hit.

289
00:31:35,060 --> 00:31:38,840
And I couldn't even tell a half hour later that that it had happened.

290
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:45,680
Cool. Smell it or anything? No, but I mean, I.

291
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,140
Like I said, I was probably 30 minutes behind it. Yeah.

292
00:31:48,380 --> 00:31:55,700
But still, you know, for them to see it and think of it is that dramatic an event and really nothing to no notice.

293
00:31:56,060 --> 00:32:00,110
And I think that also made me think of one other thing with Mount Henry that was really neat.

294
00:32:02,150 --> 00:32:06,050
Like I said, I didn't get much visitation and.

295
00:32:08,730 --> 00:32:12,320
And so unlike most lookouts, it didn't have a lock on the door.

296
00:32:13,230 --> 00:32:18,660
And I think part of this might even date back to the Pete Kit story where there was something

297
00:32:18,660 --> 00:32:24,180
about a winter time trip in there where somebody got really cold and it was locked,

298
00:32:24,180 --> 00:32:28,020
and so they had to break in. So with Mount Henry, they got Henry.

299
00:32:28,020 --> 00:32:35,730
That is Henry. They decided they decided we should. So it was neat where I would go away on days off and the locals knew what my days off were.

300
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:40,170
And so I would just leave a note on the desk that said, Hey, I'm on days off.

301
00:32:40,380 --> 00:32:47,250
If you need anything, grab it. If you, you know, if you use a bunch, replace it in kind, whatever.

302
00:32:47,250 --> 00:32:53,940
And every once in a while I've come back from days off and there'd be a note on my desk from somebody, you know, living locally.

303
00:32:53,940 --> 00:33:01,919
And so they we we had a cup of coffee and they'd leave a couple of dollars or something in exchange for the cup of coffee they grabbed for me.

304
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:07,920
And I always thought that was pretty neat, that it was never locked and people would come and go.

305
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:13,380
And it was very respectful in that regard because I think a lot of the places,

306
00:33:13,500 --> 00:33:16,979
especially like Glacier Park and some of these places that are really busy with visitation,

307
00:33:16,980 --> 00:33:23,310
you could never even consider doing something like that without having a whole host of problems.

308
00:33:23,940 --> 00:33:33,389
So that was a pretty unique part for Mount Henry. The Catch, and I know the association is hoping that if not doing some work on Mount Henry.

309
00:33:33,390 --> 00:33:37,670
Right. Hoping for some in the future and.

310
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,960
Really. I was one of the last lookouts to staff Mount Henry.

311
00:33:42,650 --> 00:33:52,070
And the reason for that was. But first, I had the old school family who I would never talk to them, ever.

312
00:33:52,820 --> 00:33:56,420
But the day before I went up to lookout, he called me in his office. Okay, good.

313
00:33:56,420 --> 00:34:02,059
This means I'm going to look out tomorrow, and I walk in and he sit there and the lookouts are dying.

314
00:34:02,060 --> 00:34:06,139
Breed. It's not going to be much longer. You're probably going to go last. Look at it, Mount Henry.

315
00:34:06,140 --> 00:34:15,140
So enjoy it while you can kind of thing. And it always made me want to do that much better of a job to keep the lookouts going.

316
00:34:15,710 --> 00:34:22,220
But what was interesting is when I left Mount Henry for Glacier Park, numerous to look out,

317
00:34:23,390 --> 00:34:30,140
there was an English teacher who had worked out at Troy High School who would work on the fire crew, and he always wanted to be the lookout.

318
00:34:30,140 --> 00:34:33,379
So I called them and said, Hey, I'm considering this other job.

319
00:34:33,380 --> 00:34:40,280
If I left, would you take me? And Henry said, Absolutely. So it worked out great in the sense, like, I felt like, okay, they're going to staff it.

320
00:34:40,790 --> 00:34:42,140
This guy is a perfect fit.

321
00:34:42,770 --> 00:34:54,080
But the problem is when he went up there in June to check on it and think about staffing it, the legs had rotted and the lookout had settled.

322
00:34:56,260 --> 00:35:01,750
On those rotten logs and it was way out of level and it threw some things out of place

323
00:35:02,470 --> 00:35:08,350
and the district tried for many years to try and get it back up to stoppable conditions.

324
00:35:09,070 --> 00:35:17,620
But oftentimes all of their efforts ended up not being satisfactory to the engineers out of the supervisors office.

325
00:35:18,100 --> 00:35:24,100
So there was a kind of this constant struggle of trying to get it functional again, and they just never really could.

326
00:35:24,850 --> 00:35:29,200
They did stop it one more year, about ten years later,

327
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:40,630
and then the year after that it was condemned again and deemed not functional for habitation, I guess, or use as a lookout.

328
00:35:41,630 --> 00:35:49,520
I do know that we've done an assessment up here, so there's a chance that it will go into a project pretty soon.

329
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:54,980
So I hope that happens. And that is a really wonderful spot.

330
00:35:55,310 --> 00:36:03,110
And having kept in touch with a lot of people who worked on Three Rivers and friends from there,

331
00:36:03,410 --> 00:36:10,370
I know the north end of the yak, even if it was just available for emergency use and it has a great view of that area.

332
00:36:12,530 --> 00:36:17,840
I would love to see it at least get to a condition where it could at least be used.

333
00:36:20,010 --> 00:36:23,370
So yeah, here's to hoping some work gets done up there.

334
00:36:23,970 --> 00:36:29,130
And I know the Border Patrol has some stuff up there and they're interested in it, too, because it's so close to the border as well.

335
00:36:30,420 --> 00:36:34,020
That might be another little impetus. Yes. Yeah.

336
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:42,520
So anything else about Henry, or do you want to move on to Numa?

337
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:48,580
I'm good. Yeah, I think that covered Henry pretty good. So when?

338
00:36:48,580 --> 00:36:52,320
And so, obviously, I spent three years in Mount Henry. And.

339
00:36:53,490 --> 00:36:54,990
I was I was happy there.

340
00:36:56,640 --> 00:37:07,290
And I so at that point in my career, I was only willing to move from Mount Henry if Numeric Lookout opened or Spotted Bear Lookout.

341
00:37:08,240 --> 00:37:13,790
So every year I would check in with both agencies to see if they thought they'd have an opening for either one of those.

342
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:18,020
And if they did not apply and if they didn't, I'd just move on.

343
00:37:18,500 --> 00:37:22,819
And the other ones, too, I would always call Norm Down Road, over on the Rocky Mountain Ranger District.

344
00:37:22,820 --> 00:37:29,010
Because at that time. The three Bob Marshall Wilderness Lookouts on the East Side.

345
00:37:30,050 --> 00:37:38,300
On the Lewis Clark National Forest. Those were all volunteer at that time, and I needed to make a wage in the summer.

346
00:37:38,690 --> 00:37:41,809
So I would call Norm and say, You're paying your lookouts yet.

347
00:37:41,810 --> 00:37:52,470
And you said, no, sorry. And so really my best focus, I guess, for moving from Mont Henry was pretty narrow.

348
00:37:53,720 --> 00:37:59,540
But the irony is the year that Numa I had heard might be open, so I applied.

349
00:38:00,540 --> 00:38:06,119
And and Heidi had been working for the Forest Service at that point as well.

350
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:10,050
And by then we got married in 97. So at that point were married and we'd been working.

351
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:15,150
I was in the act. She was based out a wisdom one summer.

352
00:38:16,020 --> 00:38:20,120
Ought to stand for what? So we spent a lot of summers apart and far away from each other.

353
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:25,300
And in 98, she took a job in Glacier Park.

354
00:38:26,550 --> 00:38:33,210
And then a week later I got the call that Numa was open and they offered me the job so it was pretty easy to take it even though I was,

355
00:38:33,430 --> 00:38:40,110
I would consider it over Mt. Henry, but then it was that much easier when I didn't, I could be working in the same spot.

356
00:38:42,060 --> 00:38:45,810
So moving to Glacier Park and Numa really was a nice move.

357
00:38:47,340 --> 00:38:54,810
The one thing I never realized because I had been to Numa and I'd been to a number of the Glacier Park lookouts by then.

358
00:38:57,300 --> 00:39:02,220
But I didn't anticipate the amount of visitation that those look out to see.

359
00:39:03,340 --> 00:39:14,260
And so that was the biggest adjustment going from Mt. Henry, which was so quiet, too numerous to look out in Glacier Park.

360
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:17,530
And even back then. Excuse me.

361
00:39:17,530 --> 00:39:22,420
It wasn't. I mean, I might see two groups, you know, four or five or six people a day.

362
00:39:23,470 --> 00:39:27,190
But I mean, compare the visitation they have nowadays.

363
00:39:27,190 --> 00:39:32,770
It's it's outrageous. So that was a big adjustment moving to Numa.

364
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:38,470
And one of the things that was neat about Neumann, really, this didn't affect me.

365
00:39:40,850 --> 00:39:49,430
And my choice to want to stab Numa. But what was fun with Noom is that Ed Abby stopped it for one season as well in 1975.

366
00:39:49,430 --> 00:39:57,180
And so. One thing I really enjoyed with Numa was the amount of people who would show up and who were at Abbey fans.

367
00:39:57,450 --> 00:40:04,649
Even some of his friends showed up and so you'd hear a lot of neat stories about those days,

368
00:40:04,650 --> 00:40:14,580
especially when it was him and Doug Peacock staff and lookouts at the same time, and probably causing as much trouble as they did.

369
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:19,800
Supporting the fire effort by being lookouts as well.

370
00:40:22,140 --> 00:40:31,950
Was the attack at Lone Man or Huckleberry or Doug Peacock spent?

371
00:40:33,420 --> 00:40:37,440
Approximately seven years of Huckleberry and one season of scalp lock.

372
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:42,540
Scalp lock. Okay. Yep. So his last season as a lookout was a scalp lock.

373
00:40:43,470 --> 00:40:53,100
And yeah, I think they were trying to kind of maybe get rid of them or something because they moved them from Huckleberry,

374
00:40:53,100 --> 00:40:57,020
which he loved because of the bears to scalp lock.

375
00:40:57,030 --> 00:41:06,120
And I've heard a few stories on that one from my time in the park and and he was long gone by then from Numa.

376
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:16,650
Yeah. Yeah. Is that Abby was 1975 but I think Peacock's last season as a look out was approximately 1983 or 84.

377
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:21,740
It was in their. Yeah.

378
00:41:22,550 --> 00:41:31,010
And so getting the number one thing that was neat about Numa so in this I think gets to how things have changed over the years.

379
00:41:31,010 --> 00:41:40,490
When I was at Mt. Henry, I'm backtracking just a little bit at that time on the international force, there were eight staff paid lookouts annually.

380
00:41:42,710 --> 00:41:51,050
Now there's two, maybe three. And I'll get into this probably more later as as we get up to the current day.

381
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:59,630
But so Kootenay had a very strong program and there was a big mentor for me, like I talked about Gene and Virginia.

382
00:42:00,050 --> 00:42:05,300
Dick Glaser was on Masten for many years back then, and he had this old gravelly voice.

383
00:42:05,300 --> 00:42:10,040
He was ornery as heck. He would give firefighters [INAUDIBLE] if they couldn't find a smoke.

384
00:42:11,060 --> 00:42:16,910
He was wonderful. He was a real beauty. And the funny thing, I mean, the firefighters loved it because he was usually right.

385
00:42:18,050 --> 00:42:21,140
And he because he knew the area really well, he was a local guy.

386
00:42:21,140 --> 00:42:29,330
So he could tell him to turn it the right at the red gate after the second culvert as he was trying to get people on fire.

387
00:42:29,900 --> 00:42:34,520
And so it was neat. When I moved to Numa, I was just on the other side of town.

388
00:42:34,580 --> 00:42:40,069
I just moved. At that point, Henry was 20 miles west of where he was, and then I moved to Numa,

389
00:42:40,070 --> 00:42:45,320
which was like 25 miles east of him so we could still talk and communicate on stuff.

390
00:42:47,150 --> 00:42:52,550
But what I was getting at is so at that time there were three staff lookouts in Glacier Park.

391
00:42:53,550 --> 00:43:01,260
And two staff look out on the forest. So there are five lookouts in 1998 checking with dispatch on a day to day basis.

392
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:03,630
It was Neuman Ridge.

393
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:15,070
Huckleberry and scalp lock were the three Park Service lookouts and then Cyclone and Spotted Bear were the two Flathead National Forest lookouts.

394
00:43:16,570 --> 00:43:20,469
And then I'll I'll get into this more later.

395
00:43:20,470 --> 00:43:23,860
But just picture those five lookouts.

396
00:43:24,370 --> 00:43:31,270
And now there's 11 lookouts checking in on day to day basis with cows with especially you can see how it's grown.

397
00:43:31,750 --> 00:43:36,220
And I think that we'll probably get into some of the details on why that's happening more later.

398
00:43:36,550 --> 00:43:40,840
But I think, you know, for me, starting at Numa, we had a pretty small group,

399
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:47,079
but that five was checking in with Kalispell dispatch on a day to day basis.

400
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:51,549
Like I said, what was interesting though, so I was a Forest Service person.

401
00:43:51,550 --> 00:43:57,040
I moved to Glacier Park and at that time they really didn't cooperate all that much.

402
00:43:58,660 --> 00:44:02,229
And with my Forest Service background, I showed up numerous like, well,

403
00:44:02,230 --> 00:44:06,580
what happens when I see a smoke cross the valley on the other side of the river?

404
00:44:07,240 --> 00:44:07,840
Who do I call?

405
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:18,310
Because at first it was just checking in with glacier dispatch for fires, not Kalispell Dispatch, which now is the Interagency Dispatch Center.

406
00:44:18,610 --> 00:44:23,920
And I saw if you see some over on the Forest Service, you can call it and if you want, but they'll figure it out.

407
00:44:24,490 --> 00:44:32,680
And I said, Really? That's crazy. Because at Numa my view was almost as good as the Forest Service, if not better than the Park Service.

408
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:39,310
And really you could serve both easily and and not be.

409
00:44:39,670 --> 00:44:49,120
I was never so busy that I couldn't support both efforts at the same time, and fortunately we cooperate way better than we did then.

410
00:44:49,630 --> 00:44:50,080
But.

411
00:44:53,490 --> 00:45:00,270
I guess that's also how I got involved with Flathead was I was so willing to assist with whatever they had going on on the other side of the river.

412
00:45:03,210 --> 00:45:12,190
So Numa, like I said it. It was a really good fit for me in the sense that there was a lot going on.

413
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:16,700
The park at that time too, was there was a lot of natural fire or prescribed,

414
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:22,000
prescribed fire where a lightning strike fire may or may not be suppressed.

415
00:45:22,540 --> 00:45:26,450
And at that point, we were doing a lot of monitoring from the lookouts.

416
00:45:27,490 --> 00:45:32,260
So, again, you know, I keep talking about my career and how.

417
00:45:33,310 --> 00:45:43,830
The things I've learned along the way. And really the park was great in terms of monitoring natural fire and watching a.

418
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:52,410
A fire go from a lightning strike in mid-August to a thousand acres by early October.

419
00:45:52,950 --> 00:45:56,819
So we did have some bigger fires like that.

420
00:45:56,820 --> 00:46:00,570
But, you know, a lot of times, really, you're just watching it slowly progress,

421
00:46:00,900 --> 00:46:05,010
maybe die down for a week or two and then come back to life when the weather was right.

422
00:46:06,900 --> 00:46:15,420
So in the park, I spent a lot of time monitoring fires. And I also spent because at that point, we had three lookouts in the park.

423
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:22,460
One, if not two of the lookouts were teachers. And so they would have to go back to school in late August.

424
00:46:23,030 --> 00:46:27,559
And quite often I would end up quite a few Septembers in October.

425
00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:35,930
As I spent at Huckleberry, I spent time in September once at Lone Man for over ten days.

426
00:46:37,430 --> 00:46:41,030
I spent time at Swift Current and at Scout BLOCK. So really.

427
00:46:42,540 --> 00:46:43,770
In those Glacier Park years.

428
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:50,490
I while Numa was always my primary look at the one I preferred to be, yet I really started moving around a lot too as needed.

429
00:46:52,170 --> 00:47:00,090
Especially when we were down to one lookout. And we had because a lot of times in the fall you might have a car that's still going but not doing much,

430
00:47:00,090 --> 00:47:05,579
and you almost just need somebody to babysit it so the public doesn't get surprised.

431
00:47:05,580 --> 00:47:14,160
Or the office the fire office doesn't get surprised by all of a sudden, you know, some warm, dry weather or wind kicking things back up to life.

432
00:47:14,910 --> 00:47:18,480
So I spent a lot of time in the fall babysitting fires from other lookouts to.

433
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:29,629
And I think that's where that. And then at number two, I really started getting involved with both the just the management of other lookouts as well.

434
00:47:29,630 --> 00:47:34,450
In terms a couple of years in, they created a position for me called Lead Lookout.

435
00:47:34,460 --> 00:47:41,600
So I was in charge of scheduling and maintenance and the staffing of all the lookouts in the park.

436
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:46,999
And then at that point, we also added in 2001, we had a swift current lookout.

437
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:48,680
So all of a sudden we're up to four lookouts.

438
00:47:50,750 --> 00:48:02,360
And then along that same timeframe, we started the lookout training program to where at one point I realized that Cyclone Lookout,

439
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:11,390
who I was working closely with, she didn't have much of a sense of how to work the fire finder because all of our arsonists were three degrees off.

440
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:21,650
And it was a simple mistake. And it was and I totally once I went up and met with her, I understood why she was making that mistake.

441
00:48:21,650 --> 00:48:28,010
And really it was because she never had any training and there wasn't even a firefighter fire finder manual up there.

442
00:48:28,010 --> 00:48:37,630
So that's when I. Went into the Hungry Horse Ranger Station and talked to the fire folks and said, Why don't we just do some training?

443
00:48:38,170 --> 00:48:42,490
And they Oh, that'd be great. So in 2000 we started, that's when we trained.

444
00:48:42,850 --> 00:48:50,650
And at that point, Jumbo was added as well. So I think that first training session we had Jumbo Spotted Bear Cyclone.

445
00:48:51,790 --> 00:48:56,470
And the three in and pretty soon thereafter for Glacier Park lookouts.

446
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:03,940
And so that was when we started kind of a formal lookout training program.

447
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:10,520
On an annual basis. So.

448
00:49:12,260 --> 00:49:17,060
I think, you know, as I thought about doing this interview, I thought about some things that were unique about Numa.

449
00:49:18,030 --> 00:49:25,380
And like I said, the the visitation until I got used to it, but it was a pretty busy place in terms of,

450
00:49:25,410 --> 00:49:29,730
you know, every day and a ten day hitch I would probably see.

451
00:49:30,850 --> 00:49:37,630
Have one day maybe where I didn't see humans, but it was a pretty big daily visitation was pretty common.

452
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:39,840
It's beautiful setting.

453
00:49:39,850 --> 00:49:52,540
I mean, to have the the Bowman Lake and Dark Chocolate Lake right below you to watch the colors go from turquoise in June to green.

454
00:49:52,540 --> 00:49:58,090
And I mean all the different colors of the lake Occoquan. I would go coffee brown after big rainfall.

455
00:49:59,290 --> 00:50:03,459
So those lakes really gave you some, you know, day to day changes.

456
00:50:03,460 --> 00:50:07,420
I watched news feed bottom feeding and Akcakale a lot.

457
00:50:07,420 --> 00:50:11,980
I watch Eagles. Catching fish out of Ocala.

458
00:50:12,750 --> 00:50:15,840
The setting at Noma was really outrageous.

459
00:50:16,170 --> 00:50:20,310
And then to be right up against Rainbow people like that was really neat as well.

460
00:50:24,240 --> 00:50:32,820
And what was nice, too. And the horror is at that point, all lookouts were packed and you had a packed trip every two weeks.

461
00:50:33,390 --> 00:50:39,000
So as you can imagine, and part of the reason for that was because none of the Park Service lookouts had springs nearby.

462
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:48,570
So for getting your water, for your day to day existence, it was common practice that the stock would bring your water up to your will.

463
00:50:49,110 --> 00:50:53,760
As you can imagine, you know, a mule or to a water for ten days was enough.

464
00:50:53,790 --> 00:50:57,239
And so usually that third mule would be full of all your personal gear.

465
00:50:57,240 --> 00:51:02,729
And never before had it so well as as the Glacier Park lookouts,

466
00:51:02,730 --> 00:51:15,330
because I could never come up with enough gear to send them for each hitch to whether it's books or food or whatever you can imagine, clean sheets.

467
00:51:15,720 --> 00:51:19,170
I mean, you might as well throw clean sheets and every two weeks to them because you could.

468
00:51:21,570 --> 00:51:26,970
And and the Packers there were really great. I learned a lot about working with stock from those guys.

469
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,969
And after my first season there, I actually went to the Packers and said, hey,

470
00:51:32,970 --> 00:51:36,870
you know, I come from a place where, you know, I had to carry my own stuff.

471
00:51:36,870 --> 00:51:42,500
A lot of the time I'm cool with it. If you only want to come up once a month, that's okay.

472
00:51:42,510 --> 00:51:47,160
And it was clear they were also protecting their space and their trail time.

473
00:51:47,670 --> 00:51:49,320
And he reminded me, hey, Leif, you know,

474
00:51:49,650 --> 00:51:57,160
just just keep doing it the way we're doing it and get as much good stuff in there as you can and take advantage of it and don't worry about it.

475
00:51:57,180 --> 00:51:58,559
And so pretty quick,

476
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:08,740
I eased off on that because I learned rather quickly that they like what they're doing and it just helped me live that much better up there.

477
00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:15,990
But I did I kind of made a I wouldn't say mistake, but I was also pretty proud.

478
00:52:15,990 --> 00:52:20,309
In my second year at Noom, I realized that I was probably going to be there for a while.

479
00:52:20,310 --> 00:52:24,299
And when I started start to look at the first season on the one,

480
00:52:24,300 --> 00:52:28,020
I usually don't want to change anything because I'm never sure if I'm going to be there for a while.

481
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:35,099
And so after my first season at Numa, when I knew I was going back, I saw the room for a couple of changes.

482
00:52:35,100 --> 00:52:39,720
So I built a desk and at that point.

483
00:52:40,830 --> 00:52:45,420
I had a I built the desk actually in the basement of one of the park service houses.

484
00:52:46,350 --> 00:52:54,930
In my off time at night. And and because I was proud and was afraid of what the Packers might say about it,

485
00:52:55,320 --> 00:53:05,570
I just hauled it up on my back and it was pretty awkward and large, and I at least made it without damaging it.

486
00:53:05,580 --> 00:53:12,990
But the Packers showed up the next day and he's like, and they remembered, Hey, what's up with the new desk?

487
00:53:13,260 --> 00:53:17,610
And they were amazed that I would even consider carrying it up.

488
00:53:17,790 --> 00:53:22,369
And I got. They actually gave me quite a bit of a hard time about it.

489
00:53:22,370 --> 00:53:27,229
But then once they got over it, they actually, I think in the end respected that.

490
00:53:27,230 --> 00:53:32,900
I wasn't afraid to take that on myself. But then they reminded me again that that's their job.

491
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:37,459
The next time I have something big like that, come to them and we'll figure out a plan to get it up to me.

492
00:53:37,460 --> 00:53:41,360
But that desk is still there.

493
00:53:42,260 --> 00:53:43,730
Gosh, 20 years later.

494
00:53:44,210 --> 00:53:51,560
And I think that story kind of goes with it that I was so stupid that I carried it up on my back when there was a packer coming up the next day.

495
00:53:55,130 --> 00:54:02,480
So that kind of reminds me, I think I've seen a picture of you packing up a wooden captain's chair to Tomo on a pack frame.

496
00:54:02,750 --> 00:54:09,319
So you have a history. And then one other point I want to make here is when I moved here,

497
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:18,830
I was always amazed how well the the Flathead Forest and Glacier National Park worked together because being in separate agencies,

498
00:54:19,190 --> 00:54:26,980
that doesn't always lend itself to that. But I'm pretty convinced that that you're the reason at least to start.

499
00:54:27,470 --> 00:54:34,070
The reason that that happened was because you were jumping back and forth across the boundary and encouraging that.

500
00:54:34,070 --> 00:54:39,530
So that's a feather for your cap. Oh, well, thank you.

501
00:54:40,610 --> 00:54:42,690
To me, it was just common sense, right?

502
00:54:42,710 --> 00:54:54,800
That, you know, the only thing there's a river that separates the agencies and but in a fire, lookouts, I mean, that really shouldn't matter at all.

503
00:54:55,910 --> 00:55:05,149
And you're right. I mean, what was interesting when we had like I was saying, because by 2001, we had seven lookouts at that point.

504
00:55:05,150 --> 00:55:10,760
At that point, the dispatch center had centralized two to where we were.

505
00:55:10,910 --> 00:55:14,720
All those lookouts were checking with council dispatch by then or soon thereafter.

506
00:55:15,110 --> 00:55:18,200
And really, that even made it feel like we're more on the same team now.

507
00:55:18,230 --> 00:55:25,120
I don't think the fire officers, when it comes to sharing resources, maybe at that point were as cooperative.

508
00:55:25,130 --> 00:55:37,610
But the look in the lookout world, we really had a good sense of being on the same team and the the agency or the border should have no effect on.

509
00:55:39,340 --> 00:55:44,440
How we're approaching the fire and or whatever support we might lend.

510
00:55:47,620 --> 00:55:51,309
So, Liz, did you do you feel at all that, you know,

511
00:55:51,310 --> 00:55:59,410
you you talked about starting out with four lookouts in the in the park when you were first there, and then that grew.

512
00:55:59,410 --> 00:56:08,370
And then in the Forest Service, it grew also. Whose idea was it to add the lookouts?

513
00:56:08,910 --> 00:56:14,850
Or were you instrumental in maybe talking to people that said, you know,

514
00:56:14,850 --> 00:56:23,940
it might be a good idea to have somebody in this location where we don't have many eyes or the, you know, it's going to be a little harder.

515
00:56:25,240 --> 00:56:30,610
Whatever. So yeah, I would say for sure I was involved in some of that, especially more so in the park.

516
00:56:32,410 --> 00:56:39,910
But I think like adding Jumbo look out that where that came from was they had

517
00:56:40,390 --> 00:56:45,610
some wilderness fires in the late nineties that they would send an employee who

518
00:56:45,610 --> 00:56:50,019
was working at a big prairie up there to staff Jumbo just to support the fire

519
00:56:50,020 --> 00:56:59,260
while it was going and to help monitor and of a wilderness fire near Jumbo.

520
00:56:59,620 --> 00:57:03,009
And they did that two different times and it was such a success.

521
00:57:03,010 --> 00:57:06,700
They said, Why don't we stop it? And so they just simply added it.

522
00:57:06,700 --> 00:57:13,810
And I think that was when Steve worked. He was especially involved with that and I can't remember some of the other personnel.

523
00:57:14,470 --> 00:57:24,580
But so that was, you know, the big ad was Jumbo. And then so it was jumbo spotted bear and Cyclone and then Swift current was added.

524
00:57:24,580 --> 00:57:33,090
Really? Because it was a good idea and it was staff before it got damaged so heavily over the winter one year.

525
00:57:33,630 --> 00:57:38,550
And it wasn't staff able again until 2000 when they did a complete rehab on it.

526
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,450
So part of it was that it just came available for service again.

527
00:57:43,230 --> 00:57:51,660
And then but we added Loan Man later and that was really based on the fact because I spent two weeks at Lone Man one time.

528
00:57:53,320 --> 00:58:01,750
In the late nineties and I was calling it fires way up the middle fork and up Coal Creek on the Forest Service side of the North Fork.

529
00:58:02,530 --> 00:58:09,610
And I was supporting a fire that was kind of around the corner between Morris Pass and Essex.

530
00:58:10,060 --> 00:58:14,020
And the only way they could talk on the radio to dispatch was through Longman.

531
00:58:14,740 --> 00:58:18,730
So I was on the radio nonstop supporting this [INAUDIBLE], you know.

532
00:58:20,870 --> 00:58:29,480
I don't think it was 1000 acres, but it was a multi week project and everything had to go through me at Lone Man and then I was calling in fires

533
00:58:29,750 --> 00:58:35,390
both on the Forest Service in the North Fork up against the whitefish divide and then in the middle fork as well.

534
00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:41,350
And so I think the value pretty quickly was apparent for Lone Man.

535
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:49,269
It was just a question of. We had at that point four lookouts and and three on the forest.

536
00:58:49,270 --> 00:58:54,720
And it was kind of we hit our. It was a lack of funding more than anything.

537
00:58:54,750 --> 00:58:59,790
And then that's where we started getting creative later with volunteers.

538
00:58:59,790 --> 00:59:09,110
And some of the other ways we can do things and we'll get into the forest are certainly adding Toma in 2010 later.

539
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:16,319
But I think once we kind of had our carrying capacity with their funding for these lookouts,

540
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:20,280
then it was a question of, okay, how can we add these to the staffing roles?

541
00:59:23,940 --> 00:59:36,870
Without impacting the budget any more, because I am reminded in in a nice way from the fire managers that we're not going to add

542
00:59:36,870 --> 00:59:41,910
anymore paid staff positions and look in the lookout world around here anytime soon.

543
00:59:42,600 --> 00:59:53,460
I mean, we're lucky to kind of keep the numbers were at I think it's it's apparent that they're we have a good a good number right now for sure.

544
00:59:53,490 --> 01:00:02,900
And that number. Is that a good spot in the sense I don't picture diminishing, but it's certainly not going to increase the paid staffers.

545
01:00:03,140 --> 01:00:06,230
And that was really kind of how we came up with the volunteer program, too,

546
01:00:06,230 --> 01:00:14,150
was we had lookouts that we could that were after some work, had the potential to be functional again.

547
01:00:14,270 --> 01:00:18,440
And that's really where the conversation started for the volunteer program.

548
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:26,540
And I'm kind of hopscotching around, so. Give me just a bit of guidance with which pathway?

549
01:00:26,780 --> 01:00:31,489
Well, if we're going to we're going to wind down on humor.

550
01:00:31,490 --> 01:00:34,640
That was 12 years that you spent up there. Yeah.

551
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:38,060
You also have 12 years now on Tomo.

552
01:00:38,390 --> 01:00:45,049
So do you want to take 10 minutes or so and give us some highlights on trauma and then

553
01:00:45,050 --> 01:00:51,140
maybe we can finish out with your with your perspective on the volunteer program.

554
01:00:51,890 --> 01:01:04,130
Okay. Sounds good. And I think just before I move on, because I did think of a few things from Numa that were kind of highlights or noteworthy.

555
01:01:06,570 --> 01:01:15,800
Like I said. And really, you look at my full career from 1994 until now, we've had that has been a pretty busy stretch fire wise.

556
01:01:15,810 --> 01:01:20,130
We've had a lot of big fire seasons from 1994, 98.

557
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:25,190
2001, 2003. 2009.

558
01:01:26,270 --> 01:01:33,760
So we've had a lot of big years and there's been a lot of summers where being a lookout has been all in all summer.

559
01:01:35,630 --> 01:01:44,960
And I was thinking about 2001 when I was at Numa. The Moose Fire closed the trail to Numa, which, you know, I talked about it being busy.

560
01:01:44,970 --> 01:01:51,260
What was neat, we were working 21 day hitches back then when we're needed to do so.

561
01:01:51,260 --> 01:01:52,280
That was a maximum hit.

562
01:01:52,280 --> 01:02:01,970
You could work and at one point with the show closed staffing knew me that the longest I've ever gone without seeing another human being was 17 days.

563
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:11,450
And that was simply because the trail was closed and everybody was so busy with firefighting effort that I was happy and they knew I was happy.

564
01:02:11,450 --> 01:02:15,980
So they they didn't bother me at all. And the Packard didn't need to come up because they couldn't.

565
01:02:16,520 --> 01:02:28,700
And one day finally, the bomb lake ranger Angie Rutherford and the North Fork Subdistrict, Assistant Ranger Reggie Top.

566
01:02:28,700 --> 01:02:35,089
They said we'd better go check on Leo. So they brought me a bunch of fresh baked cookies and just to see a human face for a stretch.

567
01:02:35,090 --> 01:02:41,659
They came up, spent an hour with me and must have figured out I was doing fine because they turned around and went back down.

568
01:02:41,660 --> 01:02:47,540
But that was the longest I've ever gone without seeing a human being was that stretch.

569
01:02:47,540 --> 01:03:02,290
And then obviously 23 in the park was a big year. It started with the big lightning event on the night of July 14th, and it was all in from there.

570
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:06,760
A week later, after that storm, I called on the wedge fire,

571
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:15,850
which impacted me heavily that summer and so much so that at one point I grabbed the lookout and evacuated.

572
01:03:16,690 --> 01:03:22,330
And the night I evacuated is the night that the fire bus started on the South Fork.

573
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:28,950
And the middle fork. So I was on my way home promising that I was going to finally take some time off.

574
01:03:29,790 --> 01:03:38,309
And as I was driving down the North Fork, I could see the lightning and see fires starting on the hillsides, in the middle fork, in the south fork.

575
01:03:38,310 --> 01:03:43,380
And by the next morning, I was on firefighter lookout above hungry horse reservoir.

576
01:03:44,730 --> 01:03:46,800
With 20 new fires out in front of me.

577
01:03:48,180 --> 01:03:54,370
And I knew I was going to be augured in there for a while, so at least had a spot to go to when I was evacuated from Noma.

578
01:03:56,250 --> 01:04:06,000
But that summer was I think I did 321 day hitches in a row and then finish it off with a 14 day hitch to get me into late September.

579
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:09,720
And then I think I work pretty late that year, that summer was.

580
01:04:12,170 --> 01:04:12,910
It was pretty impressive.

581
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:20,540
And in the midst of all that, our house was under evacuation order from the Robert Fire for probably three weeks before that.

582
01:04:21,110 --> 01:04:30,649
Yeah, probably. Yeah, we weren't really evacuated because I live across the road from Lake and we weren't really evacuated that entire time,

583
01:04:30,650 --> 01:04:38,590
but we were under evacuation kind of warnings and then we were evacuated, I think maybe five total days or something.

584
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:41,720
I'm not sure. I can't quite remember. Heidi could tell you maybe.

585
01:04:42,420 --> 01:04:47,690
Yeah, but it's funny because I remember the one day that they burned out on our mountain.

586
01:04:48,370 --> 01:04:56,480
I made sure those were my days off. And because I had work that morning doing some stuff, I was in no Max.

587
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:05,899
And the sheriff came blasting up our driveway trying to make us leave and I 4000 no max and had my radio and I said, hey, no, we're fine.

588
01:05:05,900 --> 01:05:13,940
I'm monitoring. I work for the agency. And he still wasn't happy with me for defying his order, but at least he knew that.

589
01:05:15,280 --> 01:05:22,690
I was in the system maybe made it, but and he was too busy trying to get the neighborhood clear to fuss with me too much.

590
01:05:23,410 --> 01:05:27,670
But anyway, all.

591
01:05:28,790 --> 01:05:34,450
And so I guess. Yeah. So moving on to Toma and my 12 years there.

592
01:05:34,460 --> 01:05:44,480
Yeah. So and like Shell said I'd had 12 years at Numa and then I've, I've been at Toma now for 12 years, I moved to Toma.

593
01:05:45,350 --> 01:05:53,090
2010 was my first season there and to be, I mean what's funny is so at that point.

594
01:05:54,360 --> 01:05:57,269
I had a great relationship with the Forest Service and the Park Service,

595
01:05:57,270 --> 01:06:04,020
and we were all working well together and I'd been helping the Forest Service with some of their assessments and structural stuff on their lookouts.

596
01:06:04,710 --> 01:06:12,420
And I put together the assessment on what it would take to get Toma either just stabilized or stoppable.

597
01:06:13,110 --> 01:06:17,760
And I gave them a bunch of options. They said, Shoot, if that's what it would cost to get it functional again.

598
01:06:18,300 --> 01:06:25,590
Let's take that route. And I said, Well, if you're going to make that one stay affable and staff, it'll all apply for it.

599
01:06:25,620 --> 01:06:32,040
And they said, Oh, great. So. So that's how I ended up at Tama was.

600
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:34,460
And I think the parks are service and well, I know the Park Service,

601
01:06:34,470 --> 01:06:39,180
they were a little disappointed me because it was them that was so nice about sharing me with the forest.

602
01:06:40,120 --> 01:06:44,019
And then in the end I still ditch them for the Forest Service.

603
01:06:44,020 --> 01:06:48,250
And my point to them was that tomorrow I'm going to have the same view I do with the park.

604
01:06:50,730 --> 01:06:54,299
And so we still had a really good relationship between the two agencies.

605
01:06:54,300 --> 01:07:05,760
But at the time it was a little bit, I would say, just challenging to to, you know, keep people's feelings from getting hurt.

606
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:09,450
And like, I'm defying something and and we're all good.

607
01:07:09,450 --> 01:07:17,669
But it took a little bit of conversations to make sure that, you know, in my mind, I was happy with all the agencies.

608
01:07:17,670 --> 01:07:26,640
It was simply about moving to a spot that I think would that might suit me just as well, if not better than Numa and I was.

609
01:07:28,270 --> 01:07:36,610
When I moved to Tama, the lack of hesitation pretty quickly, I realized that was why, you know,

610
01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:42,190
I wanted to switch because especially now with the park's visitation being so crazy,

611
01:07:43,810 --> 01:07:52,360
Tom has been a really good fit in the sense that I don't see near as many people as the Park Service ones, and it still has that remote feel to it.

612
01:07:54,130 --> 01:08:02,440
What was really fun about switching to Tama was, like I said, I had a good relationship already with the Forest Service.

613
01:08:02,830 --> 01:08:07,830
And so for me it was an empty shell. I've never started or moved into a lookout that was empty.

614
01:08:08,650 --> 01:08:16,180
And so it was on me to figure out the firefighter, understand and the firefighter, where is the bed going?

615
01:08:16,180 --> 01:08:22,690
Where does the desk go? And so what was great was I started early that season with the Forest Service,

616
01:08:22,690 --> 01:08:28,269
and basically all I did was build my furniture and all the stuff that was going

617
01:08:28,270 --> 01:08:32,950
to make up my new lookout because there really wasn't much there at that point.

618
01:08:34,030 --> 01:08:39,909
They had thinned the mountain top to help preserve the view and done a little bit of painting.

619
01:08:39,910 --> 01:08:45,400
But all the maintenance and rehab work on Toma was had still to get underway.

620
01:08:45,970 --> 01:08:51,250
And so over probably the first 2 to 4 years that I was there,

621
01:08:51,850 --> 01:08:59,110
I was pretty heavily invested in getting the place up and running and getting it fully operational, trying to do it in a historic manner as well.

622
01:09:01,120 --> 01:09:08,080
So that was really fun. And that first season, what was pretty neat was.

623
01:09:11,110 --> 01:09:15,939
Because of the impact of all new shutters, a new bed and new firefly.

624
01:09:15,940 --> 01:09:19,630
Understand all the furniture and all the items that got that were involved.

625
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:24,730
Get them there. We had to fly with a helicopter and multiple sling loads and it was really fun.

626
01:09:24,730 --> 01:09:34,129
Was the the hill attack route was came from the Kootenay and one of them two of the tech kids were yappy residents

627
01:09:34,130 --> 01:09:40,959
who remembered me from Henry and because they would come up when they were schoolkids and come see me about Henry,

628
01:09:40,960 --> 01:09:44,080
and they were like, we were hoping this was the leaf we were coming to help out today.

629
01:09:44,080 --> 01:09:50,200
And I said, Oh yeah. So I got to catch up with some of those guys and, and,

630
01:09:51,130 --> 01:09:56,410
and it was really neat to have them in the mix for helping me set up my next look out because like I said,

631
01:09:56,410 --> 01:10:01,750
to, like, just to get the bed in the front door was an enterprise.

632
01:10:04,330 --> 01:10:07,630
And and I'm still kind of tinkering with.

633
01:10:08,830 --> 01:10:14,200
I don't feel like I have it fully as tricked out as I want, but I'm almost there.

634
01:10:16,430 --> 01:10:24,890
And I guess I'm really proud of, of of getting Tomo back up and running and because it hadn't been staffed since 1971.

635
01:10:26,930 --> 01:10:36,200
So you think about the what that was a 39 year gap with very little use and some maintenance.

636
01:10:36,200 --> 01:10:45,139
The North workers did retrofit at one point and they kept an eye on it, but to get it fully functional again has been really a rewarding task.

637
01:10:45,140 --> 01:10:48,410
And one of the neatest things was my first summer there.

638
01:10:49,470 --> 01:10:56,440
The first visitors I had. The husband had staffed it in 1967.

639
01:10:57,130 --> 01:11:04,330
So the first visitor ever at Toma walks up the path and he was expected to be destroyed or not there.

640
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:08,110
And here I am working on the place, trying to get it up and running again.

641
01:11:08,110 --> 01:11:14,140
And so he was really happy to see that it was getting restored and staffed again.

642
01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:21,910
And he shared a lot of great stories from his time there because like he he knows the story and why there's

643
01:11:21,910 --> 01:11:30,819
still the grizzly bear claw marks on the front door and why the floor is so warped inside the front door.

644
01:11:30,820 --> 01:11:39,350
And a couple of other things and why the windows are screwed in on the west side and not set

645
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:44,860
like they're supposed to be because they just kept blowing in on a lookout previous to him.

646
01:11:44,860 --> 01:11:51,219
So he he was key to me and connected some of the dots from the old days, too.

647
01:11:51,220 --> 01:11:55,360
And fortunately he was willing to sit there for a few hours and tell me a lot of the stories.

648
01:11:55,690 --> 01:12:02,890
And we communicated over a couple years over with some letters as well, which was pretty neat too, to continue to fill in some of those gaps.

649
01:12:05,590 --> 01:12:08,739
So like I said, I mean what was. And just bring it to me back in.

650
01:12:08,740 --> 01:12:11,840
The service was really fun to me.

651
01:12:12,610 --> 01:12:18,490
And so like I was saying, you know, so all of a sudden with Tomo back in service at that point in 2010,

652
01:12:19,090 --> 01:12:24,030
at that point, the park was up to five lookouts in the forest. Then with that tumor was up to four.

653
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:31,570
So we're at nine, checking in daily with Kalispell Dispatch.

654
01:12:32,260 --> 01:12:41,020
And then as I got the upper hand in getting Thomas squared away, we started doing the same thing with the rest of lookouts in the district.

655
01:12:41,590 --> 01:12:50,800
So at the time, our F.M., Michael Ardis, was very interested and excited about the chance to to rehab a lot of the lookouts we had.

656
01:12:51,430 --> 01:12:59,259
And so what I continue to do for them is run around to all lookouts and basically

657
01:12:59,260 --> 01:13:05,319
write up a proposal for what of what we could do and what it would cost to rehab.

658
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:11,200
Baptist and firefighter didn't need as much work, but still it needed some tune ups.

659
01:13:11,620 --> 01:13:23,470
So between Cyclone, Firefighter, Baptist and even later than Marine Patrol, we we took on a lot of work at all those places in those years.

660
01:13:24,190 --> 01:13:39,850
And what was really fun and exciting was once we got Baptist and firefighter to the inhabitable and functional space that's when.

661
01:13:41,220 --> 01:13:46,340
The families said that late fall when it was November and we had just come out of that piece,

662
01:13:46,350 --> 01:13:52,290
there was a lot of snow and we were up there late into the season working on it.

663
01:13:52,980 --> 01:14:00,210
That's when the conversation first came up in was fall of 2011 that he was saying, well, you know, what's the best way?

664
01:14:01,470 --> 01:14:07,160
Well, he was we were talking about how not that they were functional. We weren't going to add paid positions.

665
01:14:07,170 --> 01:14:14,430
That was not possible at all. But it was his idea that, well, what do you think about volunteer program?

666
01:14:15,780 --> 01:14:22,710
And I said, Oh, we'd have no problem. And they were amazed that I thought that we wouldn't have a hard time finding people to do that.

667
01:14:25,420 --> 01:14:34,090
But for him, that was the best way to keep now that we had taken on the work to get those rehabilitated and restored

668
01:14:34,360 --> 01:14:40,719
his that was his that was that was the best way to keep them in good condition on a year to year basis.

669
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:47,470
And he's right. I mean, having the volunteer program at Cooney Works now,

670
01:14:47,470 --> 01:14:59,020
cyclone and firefighter is the best way for us to keep those maintained and has been over the last ten

671
01:14:59,020 --> 01:15:06,160
years because we started the program in 2012 with firefighter and Baptist at that point and just to.

672
01:15:07,410 --> 01:15:14,639
Keep from getting confusing. At first it was Baptist and firefighter and we moved their paid staffer from Cyclone to Baptist

673
01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:20,130
a number of years ago because it made more sense logistically on the force level to do that.

674
01:15:24,070 --> 01:15:28,060
So and like I said that got into us having.

675
01:15:30,490 --> 01:15:40,299
11 lookouts checking in or excuse me, 12 lookouts checking with Kalispell dispatch on a day to day basis at that fire season,

676
01:15:40,300 --> 01:15:48,430
because we out of the three with the volunteer program, which is pretty neat to go from five in 1998 to 11,

677
01:15:48,610 --> 01:15:56,799
there was 12 for a couple of years when Lone Man was staffed. But to go from 5 to 11 over the course of 20 years is pretty, pretty neat deal.

678
01:15:56,800 --> 01:16:01,540
And I think that number is going to stay pretty static in the foreseeable future for sure.

679
01:16:04,190 --> 01:16:10,159
And so when I think about Toma, some of the neat things with Toma, obviously, like I said,

680
01:16:10,160 --> 01:16:15,230
what's been good for me with the for switch in the Forest Service was I really got a lot more involved with a lot of rehab,

681
01:16:16,430 --> 01:16:21,380
both not only on the Hungry Horse Glacier View District, but on the Swan District and other places as well.

682
01:16:22,100 --> 01:16:26,030
And what's been fun about Toma is.

683
01:16:28,320 --> 01:16:33,350
It's so quiet and it kind of has that remote feeling. But there's just all the wildlife, too.

684
01:16:33,360 --> 01:16:37,650
I mean, there's a lot of bears that occupy the ridge top.

685
01:16:38,220 --> 01:16:45,930
Once the bears make it up to the pi. So annually I see a bunch of bears have had really neat encounters.

686
01:16:46,590 --> 01:16:53,790
I've been charged twice and both times were bluff charges, but pretty dramatic in the sense that they got really close and were pretty agitated.

687
01:16:54,420 --> 01:17:02,250
And, uh, there is one bear that I'm sure would have played with my dog because it was so amenable to us.

688
01:17:02,250 --> 01:17:05,819
And it just, it was a big, tall, rangy black bear that stood up.

689
01:17:05,820 --> 01:17:09,270
And I swear it was seven feet tall. It was really neat. And then it just.

690
01:17:10,460 --> 01:17:15,110
Followed me and my dog real close and didn't feel aggressive at all that knew I had

691
01:17:15,110 --> 01:17:20,479
a bear that followed me for a mile once and I felt scary like it was stalking me.

692
01:17:20,480 --> 01:17:23,540
But this one just seemed like it was loping along.

693
01:17:23,540 --> 01:17:30,949
Just happened to be kind of hanging around us. And I actually had Leash the dog just to make sure they didn't start playing and something

694
01:17:30,950 --> 01:17:36,110
didn't go haywire because that I was worried what what could result if that had happened?

695
01:17:38,730 --> 01:17:44,510
And. And I'm losing my.

696
01:17:44,520 --> 01:17:45,460
Yeah, I guess I'm,

697
01:17:45,590 --> 01:17:55,590
I'm trying to think what other Thomas stuff and then Thomas what's been interesting is Thomas isn't as busy with fire as I was at Numa and I

698
01:17:55,590 --> 01:18:03,330
think part of that is because I'm only two miles from Canada and I'm looking at so much north facing country both in the park and the forest.

699
01:18:04,110 --> 01:18:09,510
But because the radio coverage isn't as strong up at the north end of the North Fork,

700
01:18:10,560 --> 01:18:14,250
it's transition into more just supporting the effort on the radio.

701
01:18:15,270 --> 01:18:16,379
So when there are fires,

702
01:18:16,380 --> 01:18:25,170
quite often they lean on me to get out to Kalispell Dispatch and or to the fire managers both at Hungry Horse and or West Glacier,

703
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:29,309
to get the information to the fire managers and to the dispatch center.

704
01:18:29,310 --> 01:18:39,330
So where it's transitioned for me, more of a it's less of a fire monitoring and smoke detection role and way more of a radio

705
01:18:39,630 --> 01:18:47,370
relay and monitoring the radio situation to support the effort from Tomo which which is,

706
01:18:47,370 --> 01:18:51,000
is as rewarding a prospect as well.

707
01:19:00,660 --> 01:19:07,260
And so I think, you know, and that's what's been good with my Forest Service time, too, is with Toma.

708
01:19:09,640 --> 01:19:15,460
And getting all the other lookouts back up and running as that carried on.

709
01:19:16,900 --> 01:19:20,000
And we kind of got the upper hand, a lot of them in the end.

710
01:19:20,350 --> 01:19:26,470
That's when I started going to the clearing as National Forest in Idaho to help them with their lookouts as well.

711
01:19:26,830 --> 01:19:34,330
Because I had some time at that point, I'd gained a bunch of expertise on on restoration and maintenance.

712
01:19:34,810 --> 01:19:43,240
And so there's three different three excuse me, three different Ranger districts down there where I've been going through their lookouts,

713
01:19:43,690 --> 01:19:50,020
kind of one at a time, helping them keep the lookouts that they're staffing in good shape,

714
01:19:50,710 --> 01:19:55,210
fully functional, and ready for another 20, 30 years of service,

715
01:19:55,600 --> 01:20:03,760
which that's been a really rewarding part of my work as well, doing stuff down there and keeping them running.

716
01:20:06,600 --> 01:20:12,130
Any other. I mean, can you think of any other? Tom or volunteer?

717
01:20:12,760 --> 01:20:19,240
Well, not really, Leif. It's been really eye opening for me to.

718
01:20:19,630 --> 01:20:25,300
To learn more about your history and what an important part of the program you are here.

719
01:20:25,310 --> 01:20:27,700
So I we both.

720
01:20:27,730 --> 01:20:38,290
Both Beth and I and the world appreciate you taking the time to share this with us so we can capture it and and make it a part of the history.

721
01:20:38,640 --> 01:20:48,040
Yes. We're just glad that you're able and willing and to continue doing this because it's for us.

722
01:20:48,190 --> 01:20:53,709
Kjell and I both it's also very important, you know, we haven't had the years you have,

723
01:20:53,710 --> 01:21:08,530
but having been volunteers ourselves and seeing how you work and what contributions you've made has made our lives pretty,

724
01:21:08,860 --> 01:21:17,660
you know, fun to look out world. So we're just pretty happy to be here today and be able to talk to you about.

725
01:21:19,710 --> 01:21:29,860
Yeah. Well. And I hope that you keep healthy so that you can keep returning to outer space and enjoying near zero gravity.

726
01:21:30,040 --> 01:21:34,030
Anything else you want to throw at us before we turn you loose?

727
01:21:35,460 --> 01:21:41,080
No. I mean, like you said, obviously, for me, it's a passion and a labor of love.

728
01:21:41,160 --> 01:21:46,229
And my goal is to do this as long as I can keep doing it.

729
01:21:46,230 --> 01:21:52,860
So I'm hoping that, you know, yeah, that next summer, I mean,

730
01:21:52,860 --> 01:21:58,229
I'm already looking forward to next summer and all the good stuff that that's going to entail.

731
01:21:58,230 --> 01:22:10,170
So and I appreciate what you guys are doing with the oral history stuff and the Northwest FFA, L.A., so happy to support in any way that I can.

732
01:22:11,190 --> 01:22:18,990
Well, I appreciate you spending the time with us, and I'm going to ask the Alpine Gods to smile on you so that you can stay up in the high country.

733
01:22:19,290 --> 01:22:28,890
Best final thought. I think I've said what I needed to say, so just very happy to have you that day, Leif.

734
01:22:29,460 --> 01:22:33,750
Thank you. Yeah, it was a privilege for us. Thank you for your time and.

735
01:22:36,150 --> 01:22:40,809
We'll look forward to summer. I. All right.

736
01:22:40,810 --> 01:22:47,540
Take care. You too. Thanks. Okay.

737
01:22:47,540 --> 01:22:50,820
Bass, I stopped recording. Okay. I guess I did.

738
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:52,970
I'm not sure. Do we?