KEEPING WATCH

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[Andy] My name is Andy Baca. Gosh, I got interested. I began working for the Forest Service at Kirkwood Historic Ranch in Hell’s Canyon, and I went to school with Mark Schreiter, who did who did War Eagle and Miner’s Peak and Pilot Peak and Williams Peak. So he had a long history of lookouts and just my association with him. He did Heaven’s Gate one year and all my days off at Kirkwood, I’d go up and visit him.

00:00:34:16 - 00:01:00:25

[Andy] And that was the year that A River Runs Through It came out and the music, you know, it epitomizes the lookout life, you know, in my mind. But anyway, I got interested in doing lookouts through him. And my first look out was Stormy Peak up on the north end of the Salmon. At that point, it was still the Salmon Forest and Challis Forest.

00:01:00:27 - 00:01:29:15

[Andy] So I was on the Salmon Forest at that time, and then that was mid-nineties, early to mid-nineties, and it was a big fire year too. And they ended up moving me, splitting my wife and I up and she stayed there and I went to Middle Fork Peak and I did Middle Fork Peak for two years. So yeah, I’ve done lookouts all around and in the Frank Church, I’m probably one of the unique individuals to have done that.

00:01:29:18 - 00:02:06:10

[Andy] So and I’ve done like 13, 14 different lookouts. And that’s only because, you know, I’ve been a teacher, so I didn’t do that every year since the early nineties. Otherwise I had 30 something years in. But um, I’ve had my family up here, four kids. Um, I enjoy the peace and the solitude. The lookout life was always a, uh, a reprieve from nine months in the classroom and a chance just to renew my spirit, you know, touch base with who I am.

00:02:06:12 - 00:02:34:00

[Andy] So that’s me in a nutshell, I guess. So my wife will be up here hopefully next week.

[Jack] Yeah. I was going to ask you, what was your favorite thing about being a lookout is. [Andy] Uh, my favorite thing about being a lookout is just the peace and the solitude, the opportunity. I mean, I work out up here, so, you know, I get in shape, and I guide in the fall, and I’ve been guiding big game, guiding.

00:02:34:03 - 00:02:59:24

[Andy] So, you know, I do. I like, I can go down back pretty easily now with a pack on my back, no problem. And for my age is pretty good. So I enjoy the opportunity to get in shape just to study nature, to read. You know, I used to write a fair amount. Um, I was an outdoor columnist for a number of years when I was back in PA doing my doctorate work.

00:02:59:27 - 00:03:08:11

[Andy] So, yeah, I just, I don’t know, just being out here, it beats the city. That’s all I can say.

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:30:08

[Jack] Can you talk about what the purpose of a look at it is what your what your job is here. [Andy] Well, you know, the purpose of the look out here has remained the same just to spot the fires, to call them in. And at one point when there were lookouts on more mountain tops, the lookouts themselves would actually fight the fires.

00:00:30:10 - 00:00:59:09

[ Andy] And initially it was to protect the timber because the timber went to the timber industry and, you know, they were harvesting the forest and it was more of a conservationist type of mentality where the forest, you know, hey, cut the trees and replant them. It was more along the lines of Theodore Roosevelt. And now, like, especially here in the Frank Church Wilderness, the purpose of the wilderness has changed.

00:00:59:09 - 00:01:27:18

[Andy] You don’t harvest the timber here anymore. Now, this is more for recreational purposes. So, you know, the fire policies here are quite different. They don’t fight the fires. They don’t spend the money. They say well, this is nature. Let it let it take its course, which is both good and bad. I have problems with that. You know, throughout world history, there have been areas that were forested, that were deforested and have not been replanted, and now they’re deserts.

00:01:27:20 - 00:01:55:01

[Andy] Israel was one example of that. So, you know, you see the results of the fires here. And it’s it’ll be decades, you know, it’ll be beyond your lifetime before the trees start to come back, you know, to, um, in any significance. And some areas where it burned so hot that that it sterilizes the ground. The only way you’re going to get trees in areas of birds take a shit with a seed in it or you go and replant it.

00:01:55:03 - 00:02:21:22

[Andy] And so yeah, so I mean that’s it in a nutshell. The purpose of the look out, you know, and the change in forest policies. But anyway. Yeah. Any other questions.

[Jack] Yeah, I got one. You, you guys are becoming extinct in a way. Do you have any thoughts on the changing policies?

[Andy] Well, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s kind of the ways of the world.

00:02:21:22 - 00:02:47:09

[Andy] Everything is trying to go, you know, artificial intelligence: A.I.. There have been some lookouts where they just have a machine in the center that has infrared and things like that, where they can pick up the heat signatures of the fires. Well, I mean, that’s good and bad. But then you’re paying, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to maintain a piece of equipment and you got to pay the guy to maintain the equipment.

00:02:47:11 - 00:03:19:11

[Andy] So, you know, and a lookouts a whole lot cheaper. Plus, you’re here 24/7. You know, I mean, I’ve spotted fires at four in the morning, you know. So, um, do I like it? No, but it’s, uh, it’s inevitable as society puts more and more faith and trust in technology, you know, which is unfortunate. So. [Jack] What would you say is that thing that’s lost in the move away from people like you?

00:03:19:13 - 00:03:50:23

[Andy] Lost?

[Jack] Yeah.

[Andy] Uh, a sense of continuity. You know when you take the human element out of it. Um, you’ve lost. What gives. We give things meaning. Okay. A tree or a wilderness has no meaning. If there are people not here to use it. Uh, so when you begin, you know, using technology, technology does not have soul, does not have spirit, you know, And, uh, we do.

00:03:50:23 - 00:04:12:07

[Andy] You know, it’s kind of like Terminator. Remember the Terminator movies, you know, Skynet and all that. What was happening, It was a transition from killing, you know, from humanity to technology and machines and, uh, you know, what kind of life is that?

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:22

[Don] So one of the reasons I chose Ruffneck to work on is because it was in, you know, an official wilderness area, the River No Return Wilderness, which is one of the biggest, if not the biggest and one of the most famous. And I also worked on Oregon Butte Lookout in the Gospel Hump Wilderness. So I’m really privileged to have worked in actual wilderness areas.

00:00:35:22 - 00:01:38:04

[Don] And I mean even Horse Mountain, which was a drive up lookout, you know, you could you could still see wilderness and you could still experience wildness, if not wilderness all around you, and especially in early mornings or evenings. And, you know, there would be lots of elk or other wildlife around. And so I think working a Fire Lookout is very integral to wilderness experience, even if you don’t necessarily live directly in a wilderness area, because you’re always going to experience some degrees of wildness, you know, whether it’s, you know, watching Hawks dive bomb ground squirrels in the meadow below you or, you know, an incredible lightning storm there are going to be things beyond human

00:01:38:04 - 00:02:12:14

[Don] control that you’ll be able to witness. And so I think that’s one of the gifts to being a fire lookout. [Michael] And then I’m going to read a passage from your book really quickly and then a question about it. Okay. And you say, “I prefer the way the late cultural geographer Jamie Jackson defined landscape as a synthetic space, a manmade system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land.

00:02:12:16 - 00:02:36:18

[Don] In other words, landscape is human modified space. Usually, the result of deliberate changes in the land made by people and its people, especially the various inhabitants of the Frank Church over millennia who have affected this land. Who have left their cultural imprints on it, who interest me most.” So when you think of the landscape, you inhabited as a lookout.

00:02:36:20 - 00:02:45:16 [Michael] What would you say your role became as a component of this landscape?

00:02:45:18 - 00:03:21:07

[Don] That’s an interesting question, and certainly as an observer of the landscape, I think that’s one of the key functions of a fire lookout is just to observe. But, you know, I don’t think I had much of an impact on the landscape itself as somebody who lived there for three or four months.

00:03:21:09 - 00:04:03:18

[Don] I think being an observer, it can it should make you conscious of, you know, the small part that you play in a landscape that’s so vast. But it’s also easy to remember being reminded that, you know, there’s so many signs of human activity around you, whether it’s fire scars or mining activities or, you know, occasionally you could see signs of civilization, like in the Stanley Basin.

00:04:03:18 - 00:04:18:04

[Don] And at night I could see the lights of Stanley Basin, the town of Stanley. It was a reminder that, you know, civilization is only 20 miles away.

00:04:18:06 - 00:05:04:04

[Don] There was something else I was going to say on, you know, the trail, the trails themselves, the lookout, it’s a structure, the outhouse. You know, everything is an artifact of human activity, You know, things that we’ve created. They didn’t exist before, you know, the 19th century, most likely, or the 20th century. Excuse me. So I think, you know, all of those things are reminders that, you know, we do live in human modified space, even in so-called wild, pristine places.