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 BEAR STORIES AND LOOKOUT TALES

 PART I

I am the author of these short shories and they are freely distributable as
"etext". I hope you enjoy them.

   Robert B. Graham
   6125-A Summer St.
   Honolulu, Hawaii 96821
   [phone]
   Prodigy - WTKW87A

Internet - bgraham@ uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.edu

===================================================================


BEAR STORIES and LOOKOUT TALES


by Bob Graham


Copyright 1989 Rev. - 1

Printed by Graham-Cracker Press

Honolulu, Hawaii


Dedication


This is written for my grand-children. It is not written for my
sons -- they have heard all of these stories a thousand times, and
I'm sure they are bored with them.


Acknowledgement


I would like to thank my wife Carol for her support and for her
tireless effort to improve my poor grammar. And to Karen Shishido
for finding bad punctuation, missing words and wrong spelling that
even a "spell checker" can't find. Any remaining literary "goofs"
are mine and mine alone, and are made in spite of all their help.


To stand on a mountain top and watch the sun rise,

makes you feel alive and part of a larger whole.

To sit on a mountain top and watch the sun set,

makes you feel at peace with yourself and your God.


Prologue


As a young boy, I tramped all around the foothills north of Boise
and wandered through the thick stands of cottonwood south along the
Boise river. I tracked beaver and found their lodges among the
cottonwood and hunted jack rabbits, ground squirrels and coyotes in
the foothills.

I spent as much time as I could fishing, hiking and camping. The
hills, mountains and forests were where I loved to be.

My dream was to become a Forest Ranger, so the chance to work for
the Forest Service in Montana was what I was waiting for.


The Yaak


The Yaak River country was still quite remote and primitive in 1945
when, at the age of 16, I first saw it. The Yaak is located in the
northwest corner of Montana. Troy, the closest town, was a
metropolis of 200 residents. It had one hotel, one cafe, one barber
shop and a jail -- a typical small western town.

US Highway 2 connected the town to the rest of the world. The
highway was a paved two-lane road south to Libby, but from Troy to
the Idaho border it was only a single-track dirt road, with
turnouts for passing.  The bridge, on US 2 crossing the Kootenai
River about two miles north of Troy, was a wide, modern concrete
four-lane bridge. It was totally out of context with the rest of
the road. It heralded the great expansion that promised to come.

The road up the Yaak turned off of US 2 about ten miles north of
Troy.  Sylvanite Ranger Station lay another fourteen miles north.
The Yaak River Road was much worse than US 2. It too was a narrow,
single-track road -- but it had grass growing in the center. The
road was impassable after a heavy rain and the Yaak was snowed in
during the winter.

Being remote as it was, the surrounding country was home to a great
deal of wild life. You could expect to see a deer every mile you
traveled up the road, and a bear every trip. It was here that I
became fascinated with bears.


The Meat House


My first encounter with bears was at Sylvanite Ranger Station. The
fire lookouts didn't go up until sometime in early July, after the
"spring rains" stopped and the forest got dry. There is still a lot
of work to do before we went up on the lookout -- trails to
maintain, phone lines to put back up after the winter snows and
many other chores. There were about a dozen of us working out of
Sylvanite. We slept in the bunk house and ate in the mess hall
there.

Two nights in a row a bear raided our meat house. Let me explain.
There was no electricity north of Troy -- so, no refrigerators, no
freezers. The meat was dressed out and hung in a small screened-in
shed close to the mess hall. The screens were to keep flies out --
not bears. So to protect our meat supply Dave, the Fire Dispatcher,
staked out the meat house the next night.

About 10:30, shortly after we had all turned in, we were awakened
by a shot. We jumped into our clothes, grabbed flashlights, poured
out of the bunk house and ran over to where Dave was standing
looking out into the dark night. He told us that he had just
wounded the bear, a good-sized black bear. Now Dave had a crippled
leg and couldn't track the bear very fast, so the bunch of us took
out --after a wounded bear, in the middle of the night, armed with
nothing more than flashlights and the belt knives we always
carried.

We were lucky. We didn't find that bear that night. Dave found him
the next morning just across the river from the station -- dead.

Gene Grush, the Acting District Ranger, had Dave skin the bear out
and we all ate bear meat for the next couple of weeks. We figured
that Gene was trying to show how economically he could run the
District.

I really can't recommend spring bear. It is tough and stringy --
much better late in the summer after Mr. Bear has fattened up from
his winter sleep.


Foot-in-mouth Disease


(The names have been changed to not embarrass anyone -- except me,
that is)


We all had to be trained for the jobs we had been hired to do.
Smoke chaser and lookout school was at Libby and lasted a week.
During that week we stayed at the Libby Ranger Station and had our
meals in their mess hall. We were taught how to read a map, locate
a fire on a fire finder, how to fight a fire and the other things
we would need to know to be able to do our jobs.

One noon we all were eating lunch in the mess hall when the man
sitting next to me asked if I was the one from Boise, Idaho. I
admitted I was.  He said "I used to live there, lived at 505
Franklin". Thought to myself about it a bit and then said "Hey, I
know where that house is, Marjorie Beeson lives there now. I've
dated her and boy is she a hot number". So, I spent the next five
minutes regaling everyone at the table with tales about Marjorie
Beeson. When I got done I asked him if by any chance he knew them.
He said "Yes, I'm Kurt Beeson. Marjorie's my daughter".

I couldn't crawl into a crack in the floor even if I tried, so I
spent the rest of the meal, as well as the rest of the week,
telling him all of the good things I knew about Marjorie. I've
tried to be more careful about opening my BIG mouth ever since --
even when far from home.


The Cross Cut Saw


Maintaining forest trails was one of the jobs that had to be done.
It entailed cutting out trees that had toppled across the trail by
the winter snow, digging out any land slides and putting in log
drains where washouts had occurred. We had to make the trail so a
pack string of mules could travel over it. The tools we carried for
this job were shovels, double bitted axes, a combination grub-hoe
and axe called a Pulaski and an eight-foot, two-man cross cut saw.
The saw is an ungainly thing to carry. You balance it on your
shoulder and it bounces like a spring as you walk. Also, the handle
behind you catches in brush and tree limbs.

We had finished for the day and were hiking back to the truck we
had left at the trail head. I was feeling good and was way out
ahead of everyone else, glad to be done with the day's work. I
rounded a sharp bend in the trail and there, about twenty feet in
front of me was a bear. I slid to a stop. He stopped and reared up
on his hind legs. I was so startled that I dropped the saw. It
landed on a rock in the trail and rang like a loud bell -- the bear
dropped on all fours, spun around and took off down that trail like
a shot. I sat down in the trail and waited for my heart to stop
pounding so hard. From then on I stayed a little closer to the rest
of the crew.


Mountain Phone Lines


All communication in the Yaak was by telephone. This was before the
Forest Service started using radios.

A mountain telephone line was a single strand of heavy galvanized
wire, hung from trees (why work so hard to put up poles when the
trees are already there).  The wire was run through a wrap-around
insulator so it could slide and pull slack from the spans on both
sides in case a limb fell across it. In addition, the insulators
were attached about thirty feet up a tree in a special way so they
could pull free if a tree fell across the line. The whole idea is
to prevent the line from breaking -- it might be on the ground,
under fallen trees, but as long as it didn't break you could still
yell above the static.

The phone line was strictly a party line. Everyone that was on the
line could hear everyone else. To call someone, you first picked up
the phone, listening to see if anyone else was on the line, and
then "cranked" the ring code for the person you wanted -- like two
short rings and a long ring. This meant turn the crank, located on
the right side of the phone box, quickly around once for a "short"
and three times around for a "long". Everyone on the line had their
own ring code. Now, the crank on the side turned a magneto that
generated a good high voltage. A high voltage was need to be able
to ring the bells on all of the phones on the line.

I enjoyed climbing. It was sort of special being up a tree, above
everyone else, being able to see all around. So I offered to climb
any time we worked phone lines. There isn't a great deal to it,
just don't fall. You strap linesman's spurs onto your feet. They
are "L" shaped steel braces that go under each boot and then are
strapped around the boot. The long part of the brace fits on the
inside of your leg and straps around your calf just below the knee.
The spur itself is mounted in the brace about where your ankle is.
To climb you first put your safety belt around the tree, then jam
one spur into the tree, lean back and with your arms straight, take
a step up and jam the other spur in. Fairly simple, just don't hug
the tree and get your knees close to the trunk. If you do, the
spurs will kick out and you will come zipping down the tree trunk.

The first day that I got to climb, we were working across the road
from Sylvanite. Everyone was watching to see if I could do it.
After awhile I got familiar with the routine and was getting a bit
cocky about being up so high. I was holding onto the phone line,
when suddenly one heck of an electric shock went through my arms,
down my body, through my legs and out the spurs that were dug into
the live tree. I let go of the wire and wrapped my arms around the
tree, which made the spurs slip out. I'd have fallen except for my
death grip around the tree.

Down below, all the guys were laughing. Seems one of them went over
to the station, waited for the right time and then started cranking
the ringer as hard and fast as he could.


Cub up a Tree


One day the job for four of us was to repair the phone line up the
South Fork of the Yaak to Albert Brightenstein's farm. Albert, our
Alternate Ranger, was having a lot of trouble with his phone.

My job was climbing. The rest of the crew were clearing brush. From
my vantage point thirty feet up, I saw a bear cub in a nearby
clearing.  I came down and talked to the rest of the guys. We
decided it would be fun to catch the cub. Quietly we circled around
to the clearing, slowly closing in -- then jumped in to try and
grab the cub. He let out a squall and ran up a tree.

Now, what to do? One guy went back to the truck and got a couple of
axes. Then two guys started to chop the tree down and two of us got
on each side of where it was to fall. We were all primed and ready
to rush in and wrestle with an angry, scared cub. Finally the tree
came down. We leaped in -- no bear cub. To this day I have no idea
where he could have gone. Could we have chopped down the wrong
tree?


Roderick Mountain Lookout


I went up on Roderick Mountain Lookout in early July. The lookout
was one room, ten feet by ten feet, set on a ten-foot high log
tower. In the center of the room was the Osborn firefinder -- the
reason for the lookout. Fastened to the sides around it were two
bunks that would fold up against the wall. There was also a wood
burning stove, two three-foot high cupboards to hold two month's
supply of food and a small folding table -- all packed in this one
room. The walls were wood three feet up, and then windows the next
four feet. Heavy wooden shutters, hinged at the top, protected the
windows during the winter.  When the lookout was in use, they were
raised up on two-by-two braces to act as an awning, shading the
windows. There was a three-foot wide catwalk completely around,
with a trap door that led to a ladder for getting up and down the
tower. The cabin and tower were fastened to the mountain with four
half-inch steel guy wires attached to each top corner. The guy wire
went down the hill at a sharp angle, where the other end was
attached to a big steel eye bolt, sunk deep in the rock of the
mountain. The size of these guy wires indicated the strength of the
winds I could expect. This was to be my home for the next two
months.

Three trails led up to Roderick. One came up Burnt Creek. This was
the trail used by the pack string that brought up two month's worth
of supplies in late June. It was by far the best of the three
trails, but it was fourteen miles from Sylvanite by this route. The
phone line to Sylvanite, my only link with the outside world,
followed this trail.  Another was a poor, un-maintained seven mile
trail that came right up over the ridge from Sylvanite and around
the south side of Skookum Mountain. The third trail was short, just
four miles. It went right down the south side of Roderick Mountain,
going down at a forty-five degree angle, no switch backs, just
loose dirt and rocks, to the road along Seventeenmile Creek. This
was a "killer" trail, but a fast one.

Roderick Mountain was remote. I was all alone and would only see
two people during the next two months.


Firefinder


In the center of the lookout was the Osborn firefinder. It was a
round metal table about thirty inches across. It stood on an
adjustable metal pedestal about four feet high. Glued to the round
table top was a map, a half inch to the mile, with Roderick
Mountain dead center.  Around the edge of the table was a movable
metal ring that rotated in a track around the table. This ring had
a sight on one side and a set of cross hairs on the opposite. There
were a couple of brass rods sticking up out of the ring, one on
each side, to use for handles to help rotate it. Stretched across
the ring, from the sight to the cross hairs, was a steel tape
measured in inches. On the outside of the ring, the table was
marked in degrees.

To locate something, you would grab a handle in each hand, look
through the front sight, and move around the table, sliding the
ring with you.  When you had the object lined up with the cross
hairs, the steel tape on the map would lie right along the object
on the map and the degrees on the edge of the table would be the
compass heading to it.

Streams and drainages stand out in high relief from up on top of a
mountain. To pinpoint the location of an object, you count the
streams or drainages between you and it. Then, look on the map, and
count the same number there. Now, how far up the slope is it? This
took a little practice, but soon you got the hang of it and could
pinpoint anything on the map.


Food for the Summer


Before the lookouts went up, a pack string of mules stocked the
lookout with supplies to last two months. All food was canned,
except for a bushel bag of potatoes and a half case of eggs. There
was canned "Spam" in five pound cans originally packed for the
Army. There was also canned corned beef, canned stew, canned peas,
string beans, corn, beets and sauerkraut. The staples that were in
the pack were sugar, flour, cornmeal, salt and yeast. The only
fresh things were about a dozen lemons. This mix led to some
interesting meals.


Just What is a Balanced Meal?


My mother was a home economics teacher. She drilled into us boys
that we should always eat balanced meals. I was to get a very
graphic lesson on this subject the first week I was up on the
lookout, and had to cook for myself (if I wanted to have anything
to eat).

That first week, I was new at having to cook everything. So, for
breakfast I just made pancakes -- simple and easy. For lunch I made
biscuits and had them with jam, again simple and easy. Dinner, I
had "Spam" or corned beef, with some left-over biscuits.

After about a week of this fare, I woke up one morning feeling
very, v-e-r-y  s-l-u-g-g-i-s-h. Late that afternoon I got sick to
my stomach. Something seemed to tell me that my diet wasn't quite
right -- I don't know why I felt that. So I opened a can of string
beans, heated them up and proceeded to eat the whole can. Then went
to bed.  The next morning I felt alive again. From then on I
followed mom's advice -- I balanced my meals by always including
vegetables.


Lookout Routine


I got up at the crack of dawn, not that I wanted to, I didn't have
any choice -- when the sun came up it came blazing right into my
room.  That's what happens when you live in a glass house on top of
the world.

The first thing that had to be done was to check the area for
"smokes".  Checking was done out on the catwalk so that the window
glass would not obscure a faint smoke. First, select a small
section of terrain and "sweep" it with your eyes. This was done by
starting close to the lookout, checking the closest drainage very
carefully, moving out to the next drainage and then the next until
everything had been checked, for about twenty miles out. Then
"sweep" the next section in the same way, working all the way
around. This took about fifteen minutes.  When I had finished I was
sure there were no "smokes" that could be seen from Roderick within
twenty miles.

All lookouts measured and reported any rainfall daily. Any amount
of rain would reduce the fire danger. My rain gauge was down the
hill a ways, so I would lower the stairs, run down the hill to the
rain gauge and measure any rain that had fallen during the night.

Now I could ring Sylvanite, make my morning report to let them know
I was still alive, that there were no "smokes" in my area and how
much rain, if any, fell during the night.

Next it was breakfast time. I first had to build a fire in the
stove, so I could cook pancakes or fry eggs -- whatever I wanted to
fix. Of course I had to wash my own dishes.

After breakfast it was time for the daily water haul. There was no
running water on the lookout. It all had to be hauled up the hill
from a spring, in a five gallon bag, on my back. This daily chore
took about an hour. Sometimes I would wash clothes at the spring.
I would never take a bath there -- that water was like ice.

Checking the area was done every hour and took about fifteen
minutes.  I got to know every little dimple in the terrain that
surrounded the lookout, until I had it committed to memory.

The next break was lunch -- usually leftover pancakes or biscuits.
The pancakes, I would spread with jam, roll them up and eat them.
Try it sometime, it's pretty good!

Roderick mountain was shaped so I could not look down into the
Seventeenmile Creek drainage. To overcome this, the Forest Service
had built a cupola on a point named Pleasant Mountain, which
overlooked Seventeenmile Creek. The cupola was about five feet by
five feet, built like a miniature lookout. It had an Osborn
firefinder inside and a phone line had been run down to it.
Pleasant Mountain was about a mile southwest of the lookout and
about five hundred feet lower. About two or three o'clock every
afternoon I would make the trip down to check the Seventeenmile
Creek area.

Cooking, and just heating the lookout, took a lot of wood. There
was a pretty good supply already cut when I got there. All I had to
do was split it up for the stove. The unwritten rule in the
mountains is to always replace what you use. So, one chore that had
to be done from time to time was cut wood. Some of the dead snags
around the lookout had fallen. If only one person was going to use
an eight foot crosscut saw you took the other handle off. That way
it wouldn't bounce from side to side so much. First I had to pick
a snag and start bucking wood. It took practice, but soon you could
push the saw, as well as pull it. It was just one more chore that
had to be done.

Around four in the afternoon was the time to start making supper.
After supper, around six in the evening, the dispatcher would
connect all of the lines onto the main-line and we would get a
chance to talk to all of the other lookouts. As it got dark, we
could see a Coleman lantern burning on top of every mountain that
had a lookout -- Grizzly Peak, Baldy, Garver, Northwest Peak and
Henry Mountain. As it got later the conversations died down, and
one by one the lights on the mountain tops went out as the Colemans
were extinguished.


Clothes for a Lookout


What does one wear on a lookout? I don't know what everyone else
wore, but everything I wore on the lookout, I had to wash by hand
down at the spring. This was a chore that I could really have done
without. After a week or so, I finally had my wardrobe down to a
"bare" minimum.

I needed a hat to shade my eyes, so my old green broad brimmed hat
worked just fine. Shoes, I needed boots when I was away from the
lookout, so my "loggers" with double aught caulks (quarter inch
steel spikes) worked fine. Inside I wore moccasins. Up there, I
always carried a .32 caliber revolver. So I just made a breach
cloth out of an old pair of worn out jeans -- tucked it up and over
my gun belt in front and back. Comfortable, easy to put on, easy to
wash -- and there was no one around to say anything about it. If I
got chilly, I just put on a shirt or jacket.

The only problem I had with this outfit was when I went down to the
spring for water. At the spring, there were a lot of mosquitoes!


Lemon Meringue Pie


I love lemon meringue pie -- with the lemon filling an inch thick
and the meringue an inch and a half high. Yummmm!!

Now the more I thought about it, the more my mouth watered. There
was still that dozen lemons that came up with the food supply, and
I didn't want them to go to waste. So, I pulled out the "Lookout
Cook Book" (each lookout had one). The recipes were specially made
for the high altitude on the mountain. I looked and looked, but
couldn't find any lemon meringue pie.

I called Dave down at Sylvanite and asked him to connect me to Mrs.
Grush, the Acting Ranger's wife. I explained to her what I was
trying to do. She asked me if I had a "Lookout Cook Book". I
assured her I did, but said I couldn't find lemon meringue pie
anywhere in it. She asked me to wait a minute -- came back on the
line and told me to turn to page 12. I did -- looked at it -- and
said to her "All I can find there is lemon 'mer-ig-new' pie". She
couldn't suppress her laughter, but finally explained that was how
it was pronounced -- I could hear Dave, who had stayed on the line,
just roaring. That was the big joke for a long time.

Well, I made my "mer-ig-new" pie. The crust burned -- the lemon
filling candied -- the meringue wouldn't whip. So, I just chipped
it out of the pan and ate it like candy.


Lightning Storm on the Lookout


A lookout is a safe, but spooky, place to be during a lightning
storm.  On the very peak of the roof is mounted a two-foot
lightning rod. It is made of a half-inch round copper bar,
sharpened at the tip. Four lengths of quarter-inch cooper wire
connect to the lightning rod, one coming down each edge of the roof
and then on down each corner of the lookout. They were connected to
a square of the same material running along the outside of the top
of the lookout, just above the windows.  Another square of copper
wire ran along the outside at floor level.  This framed the entire
lookout in a quarter-inch copper wire box. The quarter-inch copper
continued down each leg of the tower and connected to another
square on the ground. This square was then connected to heavy
galvanized wire in four places, the same wire as used for the phone
line. These four separate lines ran down the mountain, one on each
side, to the nearest spring. There, they were connected to a coil
of wire buried in the spring to form a good electrical ground.
Inside the lookout, all large metal objects were connected to this
grounding box -- the firefinder in the center of the room, both
metal bunks, and the stove.

My first storm came about a week after I had been on Roderick. It
was after dark and I could see the lightning in the storm as it
rolled in from the south. As it got closer I started to hear the
thunder caused by each strike. One way of locating where a
lightning bolt hits ground is to count the seconds from when you
see the strike until you hear the thunder. Sound travels about a
mile in four seconds, so just divide by four -- that is the
distance in miles. If you get a bearing on the firefinder where the
strike hit ground and you "count" the distance, all you have to do
is measure the distance out on the map.

The storm moved in around me and got more intense. Inside the
lookout I began to see an eerie glow shifting around the top of the
stove. The corners of my bunk glowed -- the heads of the nails in
the ceiling glowed. I was petrified. Was I imagining it? Suddenly -
- a blinding flash, followed almost at the same instant by a
deafening crash -- a bolt of lightning hit the other hump of the
mountain, less than a quarter of a mile away. The glow was gone
from the stove, the bunk, and the nail heads. Saint Elmo's Fire!

It was pitch black and I couldn't see where the different drainages
were, except when a bolt of lightning illuminated the mountains for
a split second. There, down the hill, were a whole series of fires.
This was my job, to locate and report fires -- I turned on the
hooded battery lamp that hung over the Osborn firefinder, and took
a sight on the first fire. All of the fires appeared to be down in
the Burnt Creek drainage. I wrote the azimuth down, and estimated
where on the slope of the drainage it was. I went on to the next,
and the next, until I had them all down on paper. I put the head
set and speaker phone on, plugged it in and rang the code for
Sylvanite. Dave, the Fire Dispatcher answered -- I told him that I
had a bunch of fires to report and started reading them off to him,
checking each with the firefinder as I did so.

Suddenly the sky was illuminated with a flash as lightning struck.
I swung the firefinder around to mark the azimuth where that bolt
came down -- I would check it later for a fire. I came back to the
fires that I was reporting -- they weren't there. I told Dave that
they must have burnt out, but I would keep an eye on them. I
disconnected the phone, and waited. Soon, the fires flared up
again, so I called back in. I was reporting them over again, when
lightning hit the mountain one more time. All of my fires went out.
I told Dave that I was sure about them, but he insisted I check
them for awhile before reporting them for a third time. All night
long I watched as the "fires" burned brighter and brighter, and
then disappeared as lightning struck the mountain.

In the light of morning, I checked each of my "fires". Each one was
where a splice had been made in the phone line down the mountain --
Saint Elmo's fire again! I rang up Dave and sheepishly told him
what I had figured out.

Pretty soon I got a call from one of the other lookout asking if I
had any "splices" to report. Never did I live that down.


July 17, 1945


Dave called me and said that Gene Grush wanted to talk to me. Gene
told me the government was lighting a big fire southeast of us
early the next morning and they had asked the lookouts to watch and
report what they saw. I set my alarm for 1:00 AM and went to bed
early. At 1:00 I got up, built a fire and sat there watching until
the sun came up -- nothing. I called Gene and reported that I
hadn't seen anything

It would be sometime later that I realized what I had been asked to
watch for -- the first explosion of an atomic bomb that was set off
way down in New Mexico.


Huckleberry Patch


There was no running water. It all had to be hauled up from a
spring about three-quarters of a mile down the hill, in a five
gallon bag, on my back. This was a daily chore, done early in the
morning. The top of Roderick Mountain has two humps about half a
mile apart. The lookout was on the higher one. The trail to the
spring led down through the barren saddle between the humps, around
the side of the smaller hump and then down a steep slope on switch
backs. From the top of the steep slope, it was a quarter of a mile
to the spring, which was located at the base of the slope on a
beautiful timbered bench.

The steep slope faced east, catching the morning sun -- and had the
best huckleberry patch in the whole Yaak River drainage. Every
morning on my way to the spring I watched this huckleberry patch as
the berries ripened.

Down at the spring the water was clear, cold and had a good flow.
The water from the spring was channeled into a horse trough
fashioned from a hollowed log. Since I didn't have horses to worry
about, I used the horse trough to wash my clothes in -- kept a
washboard and a bar of laundry soap at the spring just for that.

One morning, I came over the top of the hump and looked down the
slope at the huckleberry patch. There, right in the middle of MY
huckleberry patch was a big black bear eating MY huckleberries!

What to do? I pried loose a large bolder from the edge of the trail
and got it rolling down the slope toward the bear. He heard the
noise, looked up and saw something coming through the bushes at
him. The rock hit another rock a few feet above him and bounced out
of the bushes up into the air. The bear turned around and tore off
down the hill as fast as he could go, rolling end over end down the
slope and then out through the timber.

I sat down on the trail and laughed and laughed. I went on down,
got my water and washed my clothes, feeling that I had gotten the
best of that bear.

The next morning I checked the huckleberry patch -- no bear. I
thought to myself that I must have scared him clear out of the
country for good. When I got to the spring -- there were all of my
clean clothes, shredded, my washboard torn apart and even a bite
taken out of my bar of soap. Mr. Bear had the last word!


Biscuits


One of the staples of lookout fare was biscuits and jam -- this was
our snack. Each of us made biscuits our own way. I made rolled
biscuits, rolling them out with a rolling pin, the way my
grandmother taught me.  The key, she told me, was to make them as
moist as possible, but not quite to where they stuck to the bowl
they were mixed in. And Grandma made the best biscuits in the
world.

Over on Grizzly Peak Lookout, just north of Roderick Mountain, was
"Slim" Condon. "Slim" was from Des Moines, Iowa. We were the only
two people on the Burnt Creek phone line, so we stayed on the line
a good bit of the day, just for company.

One hot, hazy afternoon there was a lightning storm going on way
down south by Libby, but nothing happening in our area. "Slim" was
baking biscuits. Now "Slim" made drop biscuits. He mixed them up,
but instead of rolling them out, just dropped spoonfuls of wet
dough on the biscuit pan. To make them this way, they had to be
extra wet -- almost runny.

We were talking, when there was a sharp crackle on the phone line.
"Slim" swore and said something about getting off the line, then
the line went dead.

It wasn't until late that evening that I could get "Slim" to answer
the phone. At last he answered. After a lot of talking I finally
got him to tell what had happened.

Seems he had finished dropping his wet biscuits on the pan, had the
oven door open and was just in the process of putting the pan in
the oven. At that same instant lightning must have hit the line
down south, miles and miles away, traveled up to Sylvanite, jumped
over to our line, went through "Slim's" headset, through his arms,
through the biscuit pan, to ground through his stove. That was the
crackle I had heard. The muscles in "Slim's" arms involuntarily
contracted from the electricity, jerking the pan of wet, sticky
dough right up into his face.

"Slim" maintained he could have gotten killed! I'm afraid I wasn't
very sympathetic, I just rolled and rolled on my bed laughing.


Wolves on the Mountain


There were wolves in the Yaak. In the evening, before it got dark,
one wolf would start howling. Pretty soon there would be a chorus
all around the mountain and down into every valley and draw.

One morning I had made my water haul and had just finished climbing
back up the switchbacks through the huckleberry patch. I stopped at
the top and leaned over to ease the weight of the forty pounds of
water on my back. Turning around, I looked out over the timbered
bench below me.

For some reason I had the urge to howl. Just to see what would
happen, I let out the best wolf howl I could muster out over the
bench below.  Suddenly there was an answering howl from down on the
flat -- then another from over to the side -- and still another.
Soon the whole bench seemed alive with wolves. Boy, was I spooked.

I turned and started hiking over the trail on the top between the
two humps as fast as I could walk. In this saddle between the two
humps were a number of dead snags, twisted and gnarled by the
incessant wind.  As I hurried through this stretch, a sudden gust
of wind swooped down, whistling and howling through the dead
branches of the snag behind me.  I thought I had aroused the fury
of the wolves and they were right on top of me. Dropping my
precious water bag from my back, I tore off down the trail like a
scared rabbit.

Fifty feet further I turned and looked back -- no wolves. I sat
down in the trail and laughed at myself -- boy, had I let my mind
panic me.  Sheepishly I went back, picked up the spilled waterbag
and trekked back down to the spring to refill it. Needless to say,
I didn't howl at any more wolves from then on.