Fire Lookouts and the Act of Remaining

Abstract

This essay follows three trips to Idaho fire lookouts and uses them to ask not just what it means to foster a deep sense of place, but why it is important to do so. The author describes his own time as a volunteer lookout, a trip to a decommissioned and deteriorating tower, and an interview with a longtime fire lookout who has spent years restoring a historic Wilderness structure. The essay uses these towers and their deep biocultural histories to unpack their modern observational functions: built after the enormous fires of 1910 to protect timber, many are now increasingly obsolete due to aircraft and remote sensing technologies. Yet fire lookouts have resisted disappearing altogether, due in part, the author asserts, to their unique ability to foster attachment to place. The presence of both structure and human, even in official wilderness, is precisely what makes lookouts worth preserving in both a utilitarian and a cultural sense.