Our lookout season in Montana starts in late June, early July, and runs through September. Before that, I’m prepping to go to the lookout where I’ve lived for close to 25 seasons, and training other lookouts. The rest of the year, I work as a substitute teacher in West Yellowstone, and I drive a snow coach [a minibus with giant tires] and give tours of Yellowstone National Park.
Once we go to the lookouts, we work independently. I wake up and take check-ins over the radio with trail crews, recreation guards, and Great Falls Interagency Dispatch. Then I survey the landscape, looking for fires. When I turn in a “fire start,” I stand by to assist the engine or hand crews, helicopter crews, or smoke jumpers—suggesting routes to the smoke, sharing changes in the fire activity, or providing weather observations. I called in a fire in July, located in a different national forest. Within about 10 minutes, the foreman texted me to learn if the crew would be able to jump. I told him that there was a lightning storm over the “start,” and the crew would not be able to. They got on the ground and suppressed the fire the following day.
[Most days], I knit or do things that I can drop in a heartbeat to answer the radio. Around 4:30 p.m., the radio is still on, but in my head I kind of turn it off. If it’s nice, I go outside and listen to the birds or pick up a book. If I’m baking bread, that’s about the time I put it in the oven. Then that’s my dinner: bread with butter and honey on it.
Most of the summer, I may only sleep under a sheet. But I’ve also seen chest-high snowdrifts. You have to be prepared for anything, and you have to fit it all in two drawers under your bed. I hate to acknowledge it, but I do personalize the space. I take my own sheets, a down comforter, and a quilt I made. A friend of mine is a potter, and I have some of her dishes there too. It’s a comfort thing.
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