Tied for lighthouse keeper as potential dream job
August 30, 2016 12:54 PM   Subscribe

 
Introverts of the world, unite! Well, from a distance at least.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:58 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Now I'm tempted to go play Firewatch again.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:01 PM on August 30, 2016 [19 favorites]


I know a poet who does this, it's truly the dream job for him.
posted by idiopath at 1:06 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I took a job aptitude test in 8th grade that told me I should either do this, or be a nurse. I'm too squeamish to be a nurse, but I've often wondered if, in an alternate timeline, I'm living out my life as a lonely forest ranger.
posted by emjaybee at 1:13 PM on August 30, 2016


> Introverts of the world, unite! Well, from a distance at least.

Or, as Stewart Brand put it: Workers of the world, fan out!
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:15 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Now I'm tempted to go play Firewatch again.

I'm tempted to play it for the first time. I've almost DL'd it on a couple occasions. I take it that it's incredibly worth it?
posted by DrAstroZoom at 1:40 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


The worst case scenario for a forest fire lookout seems a lot worse than for a lighthouse keeper. To be sure, they both come with their dangers, but the fear of a freak lightning storm leaving you on a peak surrounded by huge fires doesn't really seem to have a lighthouse equivalent. That being said, I'll give it the #2 spot, I do love those views.
posted by feloniousmonk at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


I admit when I read Kerouac's Dharma Bums where he describes spending a season doing this, I did think about it a little.

I don't think I ever considered the lightning strike danger, though. I mean, storms are great to watch and take pictures of but being right up IN one might be a bit much for me!
posted by dnash at 1:46 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


Between the name and his impressive beard, I imagined that Brinegar whiled away some of the hours practicing his medieval swordwork (perhaps in his bearskin cape!). I'm also surprised that the Grauniad didn't seem to recognize the "glass feet" of his lightning chair as pretty standard power line insulators.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:49 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


This was my dream job when I was a kid.
posted by Kabanos at 1:53 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


I admit when I read Kerouac's Dharma Bums where he describes spending a season doing this, I did think about it a little.

they should revoke your BA degree if you had not done so
posted by thelonius at 1:54 PM on August 30, 2016 [11 favorites]


they should revoke your BA degree if you had not done so

Didn't read it for college. I'd already graduated by the time I read it. Still in my early 20s though.
posted by dnash at 1:56 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I found Firewatch to be an excellent game if you enjoy games that exist only to tell a scripted story without offering any challenge to completing them. The characters talk a lot about why they've ended up being fire lookouts. Gone Home was really the first game of this genre (does it have a name?) that I played and I loved it too but some people are put off by the lack of challenge and the (typically) short play time. I was also tickled that I found the homage to Gone Home within Firewatch.
posted by WaylandSmith at 2:09 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


i think about this about once a week and am forlorn that i'm not a professional vagabond who would be able to do this seasonally. god.
posted by zdravo at 2:10 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Gone Home was really the first game of this genre (does it have a name?)

"Walking simulators," or I think less pejoratively "narrative games".
posted by backseatpilot at 2:19 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


I admit when I read Kerouac's Dharma Bums where he describes spending a season doing this, I did think about it a little.

Per John Suiter's great Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades, Kerouac mostly hated it, being freaked out by the dark and isolation, and missing bars, diners, and city distractions. Snyder and Whalen seem to have taken to it more readily, especially the former.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:23 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


These jobs are slowly disappearing due to satellites and aviation technology. However, some of the fire towers are maintained and available for short-term rental.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:38 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


"fear of a freak lightning storm leaving you on a peak surrounded by huge fires doesn't really seem to have a lighthouse equivalent"

Personally, this freaks me out more than the lightning storm would.

or so I think

what with having lived a life where I consciously avoid trying to be in either of those situations
posted by komara at 2:41 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'd love to experience a jaunt like that!
posted by TrinsicWS at 2:45 PM on August 30, 2016


I read a very enjoyable memoir by a lookout, Fire Season. It made even me want to go be a fire watcher and I don't really like the outdoors that much.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:48 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Lore podcast has a good episode about Lighthouse keepers just going nuts from isolation - especially if it was a remote lighthouse (not the one down the street in Mrs. Crudshank's garden mind) with another keeper that you grow to slowly hate.

Mind you there's no catchy song about marrying fire tower rangers so they'll just have to wait.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:34 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm tempted to play it for the first time. I've almost DL'd it on a couple occasions. I take it that it's incredibly worth it?

Seconding, thirding? the playing of Firewatch. It's a great story/game. The first of this type that I played was Brothers, which did have a puzzle platform aspect to it, but it was very much a narrative about two brothers helping each other and one of the few video-games that has ever moved me to tears. I like that we now live in a video-game world where there are games that are not just guns and violence. It's nice to just explore and be in a world and let the story take a hold of you. Life is Strange was also wonderous in this way, though I still hate the ending.
posted by Fizz at 3:37 PM on August 30, 2016


Seems like you could automate it with a webcam and some image recognition, if you see white, yellow, orange, or red where there was green, shoot a text alert to a real live person.

Did everybody here read Dharma Bums? I thought I was the only one dreaming of nights perched upon lightening safety stools with insulated glass ball feet.

What kind of name is 'Japhy' though?
posted by leotrotsky at 3:46 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have a great aunt whose father was a lighthouse keeper and who grew up in the lighthouse service, sometimes very remote ones. Hurricanes and winter storms were the big threats and sometimes they'd be stuck inside for three days and the downstairs furniture would be floating, and they might be cut off from civilization for a week or more after. Sometimes she could go to school by rowboat and sometimes they were too far away for even that. At one lighthouse they were on an island connected to the mainland by a wooden causeway bridge. They had a cat who refused to poop on the island, so during hurricanes he'd howl until they let him out, they cross to the mainland with all his claws dug in to the wooden slats, waves washing over him every few seconds. And then he'd stalk back the same way.

Anyway, hurricanes and isolation.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:47 PM on August 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


(The talk of Firewatch reminded me I wanted to check it out - but it looks like my Mac is too old for it, doesn't meet the minimum specs, so I'm out of luck. Sad face.)
posted by dnash at 4:26 PM on August 30, 2016


he worst case scenario for a forest fire lookout seems a lot worse than for a lighthouse keeper. To be sure

My two favourite games of the last few years, FIrewatch and Gravity Ghost, let you do a pretty good comparison of just this.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:28 PM on August 30, 2016


There's an empty fire tower on Mt. Kearsarge in New Hampshire, and t's possible to hike up there and other firetowers in the Northeast and use it as an ersatz camping shelter. A friend of mine and I did it one winter and it was ... borderline Type I/Type II fun.

Also, on a similar notion for hermit-in-the-woods assignments, I remember overnighting around Mt. Greylock and the caretaker for our campground was a retired fellow who hinted to us that, after we setup our tents and before we settled down to making dinner, we ought to take the time to do the .25 mile hike up to a shoulder between Greylock and Mt. Elizabeth, at the intersection of the AT and an entry trail from Williamstown. He was about to leave to do it himself, because the sunset from there over the Taconics was supposed to be gorgeous. He did not lie.

As we watched the sun set, the caretaker mentioned how he was retired, but volunteering to be a campsite caretaker with the DCR was a way for him to stay busy and active after his wife passed away. He rotates a few days on, few days off, and it just kept him outside. It seemed like a good enough retirement plan to me as any, assuming that I ever get to retire.
posted by bl1nk at 4:44 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


What kind of name is 'Japhy' though?

the annoying kind
posted by thelonius at 4:54 PM on August 30, 2016


The worst case scenario for a forest fire lookout seems a lot worse than for a lighthouse keeper. To be sure, they both come with their dangers, but the fear of a freak lightning storm leaving you on a peak surrounded by huge fires doesn't really seem to have a lighthouse equivalent.
Although I've mentioned it once previously, allow me to acquaint you with the Scotch Cap Lighthouse disaster.

Arguably being snatched clean off the face of the earth into the frigid ocean and destroyed in an instant by titanic and unpredictable forces is not quite as bad as a fiery death that you can see coming from miles away, but maybe that's a matter of personal preference? (semi-apropos Frost: "From what I've tasted of desire. I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate. To say that for destruction ice. Is also great. And would suffice.")
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:40 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


We used to hike up to a lookout that only a few years ago burned to the ground- amazing place- Needles lookout in the Sierras. Twas blown away a few years ago (okay prolly 18 years) reading a TC Boyle short about a crazy guy stalking a firelookout lady (Needles used to be staffed by a woman and her cat Smokey). Kind of creepy stuff that the USFS was concerned by. To some extent being able to drive to near the lookout ruins the veneer of remoteness. However Needles, which got quite busy with hikers in summer weekends, was an amazing feat of engineering and crossing the catwalk to the lookout was one of the scariest experiences I've had as I hate heights sans self anchored ropes. The firelookout woman was a treat to talk to and willing to handle the crowds with aplomb. She'd close the catwalk during fires to prevent distraction. Her hut was covered in many 1/2" wires stretching down the granite and her stool had the insulators built in. I would have given almost anything to sit there amidst a thunderstorm alone in a stool.

Thanks for dredging up the memories, especially since the Man has started.
posted by mrzz at 6:06 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Once again MetaFilter follows life. Last weekend I went on a hike up Mount Baker's Park Butte, about 2.5 hours out of Seattle, that ended at a well-preserved lookout perched precariously on a mountain top. It's maintained, but no longer staffed. You won't be lonely if you go, though. It looks like hikers start out before sunrise to snag the hut for that night (and it's only a 2 1/2 hour hike).
posted by morspin at 6:14 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


What kind of name is 'Japhy' though?

Diminutive of "Japheth," (literally "he expands") as seen in the Old Testament.
posted by Bob Regular at 6:44 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Seems like you could automate it with a webcam and some image recognition, if you see white, yellow, orange, or red where there was green, shoot a text alert to a real live person.

That does imply that you've got pretty reliable image recognition and a pretty reliable way to send the message back. It's not undoable, with solar panels and satellite phones. But it's not quite as straightforward as you might like, once you have mountains breaking your radio line of site, snow and ice building up on the solar panels every year, etc, etc.
posted by wotsac at 6:51 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


My great-great aunt was a fire lookout for like 20 years starting in the late 1930's. I never got to meet her, but she seemed like a real awesome person and she was also doing the job a time when you had to have a lot of backwoods skills to find your own food or trek long distances on foot/canoe for supplies. Even with the modern updates to the task (I spotted a microwave in the link), I'm totally, totally not cut out for that kind of isolation. I don't know how on earth I hadn't considered lightning either...

Anyhow, I'd definitely suggest looking into renting old fire watchtowers! I rented this one a couple years back and while at this location you didn't sleep in the tall spindly looking tower (a pro or con depending on the kind of person you are), it was easily accessible, cheap, utterly quiet, and there were so many stars at night! Apparently the towers with smaller non-lodging cabins like this are common in the Midwest and you need to hit the Rockies before you start finding lookout tower cabins with lodging at the top...so I'm definitely planning on heading that way and renting one of those in the future!
posted by giizhik at 6:53 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


Did everybody here read Dharma Bums? I thought I was the only one dreaming of nights perched upon lightening safety stools with insulated glass ball feet.

"You can't fall off a mountain"

I always thought the Dharma Bums was better than On the Road and to me had something of a Krakauer vibe: like Into the Wild or Into Thin Air, simultaneously hitting for me both the ideas of "wouldn't living this way be awesome" as well as a substantial subtext of "well perhaps actually living this way is really not such a good idea."
posted by soylent00FF00 at 6:55 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


I had the privilege of meeting and sheltering with the fire watch ranger on Mt Holmes in Yellowstone National Park a not so few years ago and his mannerisms, duties, hobbies, and setting were all interesting as hell.

I hear they've mostly phased out that job in ynp these days. Kinda like the clacky train sign someone mentioned in a post around here the other day, it isn't something that surprises me but it does make me sad for hard to explain reasons.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:04 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


My dad did this during the summer to pay his way through college in the late 50s and early 60s. The towers were very exposed to possible lightning strikes. So they were grounded with copper wires. There was a stool with rubber feet which you sat on during a storm to isolate you from any hit on the tower.

The last summer up here the forest service rebuilt the lookout. That's when they discovered that the copper cables that were supposed to ground the tower had never been installed correctly.
posted by humanfont at 7:22 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


There are four abandoned lookouts within a couple hours drive of my place. I've always wanted to spend a summer as a lookout and a summer herding sheep. I know several ex-lookouts and sheepherders--they're all interesting people.

I'm not sure how I'd do in a lookout in a bad storm. Been in several severe storms while camping in tents, and the idea of being the highest point in a little wooden hut on a stool with glass over the legs sounds...pretty intense.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:15 PM on August 30, 2016


So is it basically assumed that a storm would be loud enough to wake up even a deep sleeper? Because I don't see any references to glass insulators on the feet of the bed. Or maybe that's just not mentioned?
posted by Guernsey Halleck at 8:19 PM on August 30, 2016


I wonder if there's a way to increase volunteer positions, if only to keep people from vandalizing lookouts.

In Montana I'm not aware of people vandalizing lookouts or Forest Service cabins. It is a truism that the farther from a road something is the less likely it is to be vandalized and most lookouts here require a hike. I have rented drive-in Forest Service cabins across Montana for the last 25 years and have never seen vandalism. The bigger (small) problem is that people keep bringing crap into cabins like it is their personal cabin. Propane grills (but not a big propane bottle) and by the way it's griz country so you don't leave a grill outside and the funniest/stupidist was leaving behind a Keurig coffee maker that required cups. Like the next person going in just happened to bring the disposable cups but not a Keurig coffee maker.

The Forest Service uses volunteers to give the peak freaks a break. I have a friend who is right now at a lookout as a replacement for a week.
posted by ITravelMontana at 8:25 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Levi Brinegar mans a fire lookout in Helena national park. Door is bear-proofed.

Wait, I've seen his photo. How does he get in?
posted by hippybear at 9:04 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Jumping on the Dharma Bums wagon. Every time I read it I feel that pull. Wouldn't it be great to unplug and have books and a note book and pen. (Also agree, it's my favorite Kerouac work)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:26 PM on August 30, 2016


(Spent the evening looking at acreage in remote parts of the state)
posted by wotsac at 9:54 PM on August 30, 2016


This was the job I dreamed of when I was a child. I grew up hearing of my great great uncle who lived in a forest tower on a mountain, away from everyone. Story goes that he built out a narrow gravel road, a few buckets hauled up every time he came back from town. A years-long passtime that would wash away in heavy rains.

I would dream of climbing a ladder to that single room above everything, to just watch over the quiet earth. It sounded like paradise.

I still remember the shivering chill of dread that bloomed in my gut when I realized that I was a person who required human contact.

But one year, my relative disappeared into the woods forever. So there's that. And I've learned that solitude is possible to find even in a crowd. I don't really need to live on a mountain.
posted by zennie at 10:01 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Personally, this freaks me out more than the lightning storm would.

Flagged as "Didn't turn out to be a picture of a kraken".
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 5:41 AM on August 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


(The talk of Firewatch reminded me I wanted to check it out - but it looks like my Mac is too old for it, doesn't meet the minimum specs, so I'm out of luck. Sad face.)

It's on the Playstation Store, if you have one (and, I suppose, even if you don't).
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:12 AM on August 31, 2016


This might be the perfect way for me to obliterate my (already questionable) social skills.

Regarding storms...

I recently read part of a biography on John Muir. Once, instead of finding shelter during a violent storm, he climbed the highest tree that he could find, and revelled in the storm.

Different strokes for different buckaroos.
posted by dfm500 at 7:19 AM on August 31, 2016


Yup, absolutely great job for many authors, but also some mathematicians and software developers.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:50 PM on August 31, 2016


Firewatch is enjoyable, with the caveat that it earns the 'walking sim' name. You're making decisions and working through a narrative but the one thing you cannot just clickclickclick through to the next stage is the sometimes tiresome trodding from one place to another. It's part of the creation of a feeling, but if you mind needing to remember how to get between some places and aim and walk... it'll irk you. There were several times I wanted to just be able to press a button and have it automate getting me to my destination.
posted by phearlez at 5:21 AM on September 2, 2016


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