fire season field notes from a wilderness lookout

My most reliable customer was an Oklahoma hillbilly with a Santa Claus beard, whose wit and wisdom is best exemplified by a statement I’ve heard more than once from his beer-foamed lips: “Thing about them Aye-rabbs, they breed faster’n we can shoot ’em. More than one winter has found me working in a Silver City dive that beckons to the thirsty with a classic neon sign of a cactus in the foreground and a horseman drifting alone into the distance. Tending bar will do that to a man, although it also allows him to leave on short notice, and in so doing hurt no one’s feelings but those of the regulars who’ve come to depend on his ear.

Norman Maclean once wrote that “when you work outside of a town for a couple of months you get feeling a lot better than the town and very hostile toward it.” I felt hostile and superior before I even left. But that is behind me now-or rather, I should say, beneath me. Seven months of hustle in the world below provide more than sufficient acquaintance with the charms of my winter career. Where I’m headed the views are a whole lot better, and besides I’ve been gone too long. I can’t help but hurry, despite the sweeping views. It is a magnificent drive, and I can hardly fault them for taking it leisurely. Locals, if they see me come up behind them, will pull into one of the gravel turnouts and offer a wave as I pass, but if I find myself behind tourists, I will dial down my speed and practice the virtues of charity and patience. For fifteen miles there’s not a straightaway long enough to allow me to pass a slow vehicle. At Embree, population three dozen, the road leaves the creek to begin its climb through the foothills. Beyond the little town of Gaylord the road curves to contour with Trout Creek, a stream with sources high in the mountains, denuded in the lower elevations by decades of overgrazing. We glide across the bed of an ancient inland sea, which locals call the flats. Their graves can still be found if you know where to look.įor me, the first leg of the trip to the crest is simple and comfortable: a climate-controlled pickup truck, Satchmo on the stereo, my dog Alice on the seat beside me. cavalry here as late as 1880, and a number of Buffalo Soldiers and their Navajo scouts did not have the luck to leave the Black Range alive. He and his Chihenne followers fought the U.S.

Geronimo was born to the west near the forks of the Gila River his fellow chief Victorio, of the Warm Springs Apache, made his home just to the north, at Ojo Caliente, though he knew the Black Range intimately, having used it as a hunting ground and refuge from the summer heat. The Black Range was once a part of Apache country, one of the major reasons it was slow in coming under the domain of the American government. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu

Fire season field notes from a wilderness lookout