Alaska Wildfires August 19, 2004

Just when we thought fire season was over many fires in the state came to life yet again. Records are being broken -- the warmest and third driest summer in 100 years for Alaska. In the area pictured in the photo above over 2 million acres has burned, a record since fire fighting efforts began in Alaska 50 years ago.

August is known as Interior Alaska's Monsoon season -- the time of year that the majority of the area's 10" to 15" of annual precipitation occurs. This year the Monsoons have failed to appear.

In the photo below the only clouds are in the lower right hand corner in Canada. The other white you see in the bottom of the photo is snow in the Alaska Range.

As of August 19, the city of Fairbanks had been under a layer of heavy smoke, creating hazardous air conditions, for a week without a break.

New fires were being found all the way into October and at Thanksgiving smoke was reported coming out from under the snow.

Alaska Wildfires 2004

2004 proved to be a banner year for wildfire in Alaska -- the hottest fire season in decades. The large photo below was taken June 29th. The close-up image is taken from that large image. Photos from the University of Alaska - Fairbanks


Close-up view of Interior Alaska, June 29, 2004. The river you see is the Yukon. Those are smoke plumes, not clouds! The snow clad peaks of the Alaska Range are in the lower right corner.

Alaska Or Bust, 2003

Well then, after one fire season in Lakeview I started looking around for a Permanent dispatch position -- a job with health insurance, retirement and that fun stuff. My search turned up job openings in Fairbanks, Alaska with the Alaska Fire Service. I applied for, and got a job!

So, off I drove to Alaska, stopping in Idaho to visit my long-time friend Sioux near Moscow, Idaho and my high school chum, Fritz Fliegel in Spokane.

I'd been to Alaska in my mid-20's, working on commercial salmon seiners around Kodiak Island one year and Ketchican the next. I'd never been to the Interior, nor had I ever driven north along the Alcan.

I entered Canada north of Spokane and drove through Banff and Jasper national parks, both worthy of their reputations. It took me a full day to drive the 100 miles from the community of Banff to the community of Jasper -- I had to stop frequently to take pictures, short walks and absorb it all. I'd love to go back and do some backpacking there one of these decades.

All I can really say about the Alcan is that it is like driving through the pages of National Geographic. Broad mountain valleys, towering mountains, and lots of snow. The whole way up I called John down in California and chatted away - the phone bills . . .

The Iraq War had just started and all the way through Canada I felt so embarrassed and kept telling the Canadians I met that not all of us supported the war and Bush. It was in a coffee shop in Whitehorse that I first saw the political photo "Frodo Failed."

I must say though, that when I got to Fairbanks I was horrified. I arrived in early April during what is called "Break-Up" when the snow is all melting and ugly. My first thought was "Oh my God, what the f#@!k have I gotten myself into?" The Alaska Fire Service is located on the Ft. Wainwright Army Post. But soon "Green-Up" arrived and the place was beautiful.

When I left Oregon I packed everything I had into the back of my pick-up truck. If it didn't fit I got rid of it. I started out living in the Alaska Fire Service's (AFS) employee barracks, and got out as quickly as I could.

I found out about a Gay fellow, Chris Barefoot, who owned an "Alaska Style" cabin about 27 miles from AFS. I loaded up my pal Joe and drove up to meet Chris. The cabin was cute, but unfinished and a little overwhelming. The "defensible space" (a fire thang) was overgrown with three to four foot aspen starts. It was in a subdivision off the power grid, and way out on the edge of nowhere, five miles out a gravel road -- literally the end of the road. Chris was more interested in selling than renting and we wound-up entering into a lease to buy option.

The day I moved into the cabin, May 31, John flew-up for a two week visit. My first night in the cabin was with John. Foreshadowing events to come.

We had a great two weeks -- we went to Denali National Park and road the bus 60 miles into the park. On the way in there was a small herd of Dahl Sheep right next to the road. We could almost reach out and touch them. John got some astounding photos that looked like they were taken by a professional wildlife photographer. Once we got to the end of our ride in we walked back along the road for about five miles and hopped on a bus heading back out. We also saw several caribou, moose and a grizzly bear sow with her cuddly little cub.

When we returned I had to work a day or two. The first day I came home John had gone out and rented a metal bladed weed whacker and had cleared-out all of the aspen starts around the cabin. What a huge difference that made. Instantly living in the cabin seemed far less overwhelming. It began to feel more like home and I started in on finishing the outside of the cabin, planting grass and flowers, relocating the outhouse and other projects.

On the western horizon from the cabin the high point was a spot named Murphy Dome. The Air Force had installed a radar site there and during the winter it was the only light that could be viewed from home. Murphy Dome was about an eight mile drive from the cabin and offered a great view of Denali, the Alaska Range as well as the Yukon/Tanana Uplands, a mountain range that separated the Yukon River Flats from the Tanana River Valley.

The Uplands bordered Fairbanks on the north -- Fairbanks is not what most people think of when they envision Alaska. It is not surrounded by towering mountains. The peaks of the Alaska Range are 75 miles south of town on the opposite side of the Tanana River Valley. The Uplands themselves are "hills" by Alaska standards. When I first saw them I was rather disappointed, but as time went on they grew on me, especially since the cabin was located in them!

That fall I had a friend of Chris', Bret Fishell come in and drywall the ceiling in the "living room," a 12' x 12' space with a window facing Denali (Mt. McKinley). The next spring I had him do the walls, but I'm jumping ahead.

One of the benefits of my job was that I was able to go on flights to Native bush villages and fire observation flights all over the Interior. On one trip to Allakaket a coworker who had grown-up in that village came with us. At lunch he invited me and one other fellow to his parents house for lunch -- his Mother had some Caribou stew. I'd never had Caribou before, it was yum!

2003 was a fairly mellow fire season in Alaska, and in August I got to go on a fire assignment to Glacier National Park, the Robert Fire. I went as an Information Officer and did several radio, television and newspaper interviews. I saw myself quoted in an AP story that went across the country and when I got back to Fairbanks a coworker commented that he'd heard me on the radio up there!

One of the really sweet things about that assignment was that I got to drive into the park when it was closed to the public -- had the "Going to the Sun Highway" all to myself.

As fall rolled around I started going burn pile crazy. During the summer I'd thinned out the forest near the house for fire protection and to open the view around the house -- plus there were piles from the work John had completed in June.

In November I migrated south to Paradise, California to spend the winter with John. I was sort of disappointed to be missing my first Alaska winter, but excited about living with John & getting to know him better. Thanksgiving was great and so was Christmas. John is a total Christmas freak the way I am and totally tricks-out his house for the event. John has this habit of decorating his house for the season of the year, and to think he didn't realize he was Gay until he was about 40! Bless his heart.

After Christmas we took a great little driving trip up into Oregon visiting friends of the two of us around the state, and a great trip through the Columbia River Gorge.

The Next Step, 2002: Lakeview, Oregon

After my summer at the Waldo Mountain Lookout I returned to Seattle for school. But I just could not get happy there again. I had worked in the area of Waldo Mountain with the US Forest Service when I was in my early 20's and loved it. It was mainly the people that made the work. When I was back at Waldo many of the people I had worked with 15 years earlier were still about. As for the "new" people, the faces had changed but the people had stayed the same.

The Seattle of the late '90's and early 21st Century was not the Seattle I had enjoyed so much in the mid-80's. It had evolved from basically a working class city full of ship yards, the winter harbor for the Alaska Fishing Fleet and Boeing manufacturing to a city of Microsoft millionaires. People where not as friendly and were more class conscious. After Waldo I wanted to get someplace where I could walk down the street and say "Hello" to people without being looked at like I was a mad-man; a place where I could easily see the stars at night and sit outside and not hear the constant din of traffic.

But how to get there? How to go about making a decent living in an out of the way town? Well, I'd always liked the US Forest Service, so I started looking at jobs there -- so desperate was I to get out of Seattle that I was even willing to go against my "religion" and work on timber sales. Then I recalled I had always thought that Dispatch would be a nice place to be. My first image of a dispatch office was the one that served the south end of the Willamette National Forest in the early 80's, a mobile home trailer at the Oakridge airport staffed by a fellow named Eric Jager.

As they say, you need to watch-out what you ask for because you just might get it. In this case I landed in Lakeview, Oregon, a little redneck, logger, miner, rancher and cowboy town located further from an Interstate highway than any other community in Oregon. Truth be known, I came to like Lakeview a lot after my initial misgivings and have maintained close ties with a number of folks there.


Lakeview is located in the Goose Lake Valley in the northwest corner of the Great Basin near the Oregon, California, Nevada state lines. It rests against the Warner Mountains to the east. When you walk through town you look right up on the Warners. The Fremont National Forest boarders the valley to the east and west. East of the Warners you get into some amazing desert country, Hart Mountain (home of the Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge) and further east the stunning canyons of Steens Mountain.

Dispatch had changed a lot in the years since I first met Eric Jager in that little trailer in Oakridge. Now dispatch centers are increasingly centralized, modern offices located as often than not in communities far larger than Oakridge -- places like Eugene, Everette (WA), Wenatchee (WA), Pendleton (OR), Missoula (MT) and so forth. There are still some in much smaller communities such as Lakeview and Crow Agency (MT) -- more about Crow Agency later.

When I tell people I work in a fire dispatch I frequently hear, "Be careful out there." Sad fact of the matter the most dangerous thing about working dispatch are the doughnuts people bring in, that and infected paper cuts. When fire season really gets going I rarely see the outside of the dispatch office; days consisting of getting up, going to work, coming home and going to bed.

While in Lakeview I met the man who was to be my lover, partner and companion for the next six years, John Craig. He was living in Paradise, California at the time and we started off chatting online, swapping emails and seeing one another once or twice a month.

John & I explored southeast Oregon together that summer, going to Hart Mountain, the Steens and other spots in that neck of the woods. I was living in a single-wide mobile home, something I'd never envisioned myself doing.

That winter I volunteered at the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce visitor center and wrote a story or two for the Lake County Examiner, as well as spending more time with John in California.

Waldo Mountain Fire Lookout September 2001

(I am relocating an old blog to this site)

Well, my season at the Waldo Mountain Lookout is rapidly drawing to a close. I am back off the mountain for only the second time in six weeks. Waldo Mountain differs from most fire lookout these days in that it is located in the heart of a 37,000 acre designated wilderness area, three miles from the nearest road and only five miles from the Pacific Crest Trail. At 6,300 feet above sea level it is one of the crown jewels of the Northwest's fire lookout system.

From north to south I gaze upon 150 miles of the Oregon Cascades from 11,000 foot Mt. Hood to the north to 9,00 foot Diamond Peak to the south. Another 150 miles are visible from the heart of the Oregon Coast Range to the west, eastward to the Newberry volcano outside Bend. During the height of the lookout era from the 1930's to the early 1960's over 800 fire lookouts could be found in Oregon. Today only about 200 remain and only about half of those are staffed during the fire season. Unlike Waldo you can drive to most of the remaining lookouts and many are available for overnight rentals from the US Forest Service.


Last week I was standing in the door of the lookout gazing northward along the Pacific Crest toward Mt. Hood and decided that I would not return to Seattle. No, I would just stay on the mountain in a state of eternal summer. Sadly, the wheel of life refuses to cooperate with my desire, a lookout at 6,3000 feet above sea level is the last place I would want to spend the winter!

Harbingers of winter are upon us. The constellation, Orion, rises closer to midnight every night, soon it will dominate the early evening sky. Geese are forming their V in the sky and flying east across Waldo Lake heading for the great North American fly-ways east of the Cascade Mountains.

I seldom feel lonely. Rather the solitude is refreshing and has been a great way to get back in touch with who I am and what I value. Being away from people, cities and television, steeping oneself in the midst of wild nature has a way to put life in a whole new light.

I have learned that elk can make mighty noisy neighbors. The evening of September 12th I grew weary of the war talk on National Public Radio following the tragedies in New York and Washington. I turned-off the radio and went to sit on the south facing catwalk overlooking the Salmon Lakes Basin.

Night was gradually wrapping its comforting arms around the mountains. From below the sound of Salmon Creek made its way to my perch. Suddenly I heard the strangest shrill cry I'd ever heard in the mountains. Then I recalled a conversation I'd had with the Taylor Burn Wilderness Guard a few weeks earlier -- he said that by mid-September the sound of; bull elk bugling, marking the start of mating season; I moved to the north side of the lookout to better hear and sat listening to the ancient call of the wild, while the stars gradually brightened among the growing dark. Suddenly a meteor streaked against the band of the Milky Way, the elk bugled again; Then in the dark a formless creature flew by the lookout, the elk bugled, an owl hooted.

This week the bugling reached a fever pitch as I heard the sound of two bull elk engaged in ritual combat to determine who would be the aplha male. As I listened their combat ceased, yet their bugling continued and gradually approached the top of the mountain. Then I realized, an entire herd was moving noisily through the forest. Now these ain't no petite little creatures. We're talking animals about the size of a horse. The woods have been extremely dry and their movement was heralded by the crashing and breaking of downed tree limbs and dry brush. The bugling of the males continued to echo through the forest sounding off the sides of the mountain. At one point the herd was stretched out below the lookout when they stopped their forward movement. A sound like the mewing of a cat ran up and down the line. Then a male at either end bugled and the group changed directions and headed south out of the basin.

Now several questions tend to come to people's minds when I talk about being a fire lookout. When I am asleep only "God" is watching for fires. The chances are that a fire that would start at night will spread rather slowly -- it gets cooler and more humid at night. Also trying to pin point the location of a fire at night can be exceedingly difficult. I am required to give a "legal description" of the fire's location using the township and range system, and to get within a half mile.

Most fires tend to be started by lightning, and those storms are kind of hard to ignore. When a lightening storm moves through at night we observe its movements and try to keep an eye on where lightning strikes the ground, then look for smoke during the light of day -- you generally will see smoke way before flame.
My duty hours are (to use Forest Service lingo) from 09:30 to 18:00. If I spot a fire outside my duty hours I will, of course call them in -- and get overtime, and we like overtime! Yep, we use military time. Fires tend to be handled with a certain amount of military style procedures. Considering they are deploying people, and aircraft into potentially deadly situations it is necessary. Outside my duty hours my time is my own -- I could go and spend the night by one of the many lakes that surround Waldo Mountain if I so choose, though I generally just go for evening hikes.

And what hikes there are around Waldo Mountain! I spent my first four weeks in the mountains. during my days off (two a week) I took-off backpacking throughout the area. The lakes around Waldo sparkle like emerald gems set among a deep carpet of virgin forest. Trees abound with trunks eight to ten feet in diameter, soaring 100 feet before reaching the lowest branches, then towering another 100 feet to scrape the sky. Ancient trees, 500 to 750 years old.

The lookout at Waldo Mountain is a ground level structure measuring 15' x 15'. I have worked in actual towers, same sized cabins, one stood 40' feet tall, another 90'. The buildings contain all that you need -- propane lights, bed, desk, Osborn fire finder, etc. Heat will vary from lookout to lookout. Some I have worked had propane heat, Waldo has a wood stove. I've only needed to use it four times so far, all during rain storms where the lookout was completely fogged in. Sitting next to the stove reading a book is a pleasant way to pass the time.

Waldo has no refrigeration. What I do have is an air cooler, a section of a cabinet that has holes in the floor and wall to allow the movement of air. It actually does a decent job, though I seldom leave certain foods in it for more than 24 hours. Somehow the thought of getting food poisoning three miles from the nearest road is not very appealing.

Water. There is a spring 1.5 milers away -- a 900' elevation change. I am pleased to report that I have gotten to where I can carry 10 gallons (80 pounds) up the hill at a trip.

Bathing. Quite a refreshing affair I assure you, and something I do about two or three times a week -- usually after going for a hike. I work-up quite the sweat walking up to the lookout -- coming up from the east there is a 900 foot elevation gain in about 1.2 miles (very steep) and a 500 foot gain the last mile from the west. I fill a basin with water, get a wash cloth really wet, soap-up and rinse-off by pouring water over myself -- all outside on the catwalk. Like I said, refreshing! It really does feel good, invigorating. There's just something about standing outside, soaking wet, in the all together that make you feel really alive!

What I enjoy the most about this job is the freedom that comes with it. Other than reporting weather observations three times a day my time is my own. At Waldo I've taken to laying out on the roof reading and working on my tan. Of course I do sit up several times every hour and scan the forest for smoke.

Some nights the fires from backpacker's fires appear on the shores of the lakes around the mountain. About 20 people a week make their way up to the lookout and I take on the role of an official representative of the US Forest Service and I maintain my station with that in mind. 20 people are quite a herd compared to most lookouts, though nothing to the 100 plus a day I dealt with at the Lava Butte Lookout near Bend, Oregon.

My time at Waldo Mountain has been shear bliss. Talk about a spiritual connection. More like spiritual overload! It is hard to ignore the flux, flow, and energy of Life there. It really puts everything into a new perspective, showing just how silly the world of "men" can be.


Raw, unbridled nature, the flow of Life as represented by the events I have witnessed, the bugling of elk; watching thunderstorms form and move across the landscape; the extraordinary vivid light of the stars and moon. Above all the silence -- those who live in the country will know of what I speak. No planes constantly flying in and out of Sea-Tac airport, no sirens, no constant hum of car traffic. In the mountains the force of nature comes home in a very strong fashion -- all against the backdrop of majestic mountain peaks millions of years old, where the processes of nature, the cycles of Life, have remain unchanged for eons. At times I am comforted by knowing that I am the only person for miles around, no roads, no buildings in sight.

Depending on what happens following the end of my schooling I may well return to Waldo Mountain again next summer. It is truly a special place that I will soon miss.