LOOKOUT TOWERS

We left Big Bear Lake, California just a week before wildfires began to spark during this hot, dry summer season. I assume that the fires were spotted by some lookout with the Forest Service who mans one of those tall fire towers prevalent in the National Forests of the West. While at Big Bear, I thought about a vacation I've always wanted to take—not in a cabin but in a fire tower hideaway built by the CCC's during the early 1900's.

During the 1940's, 4,000 lookout towers were built in National Forests, but today there are only 900 left (over 500 active and abandoned ones in California), and if you have the camping bug and don't want to invest in tents and camping equipment, you can rent one of these towers for $30-$50 a night. The space is small—12 to 15 sq. feet—but most of them have heat, table, chair, and a bed but no water or electricity. However, the panoramic views from these eagle perches are said to be unforgettable, especially from the Little Guard Lookout in northern Idaho that touts sweeping views of the Bitterroot Mountains.

The Forest Service still uses many lookout towers, using mapping tools to determine the location of fires, and both men and women man them. According to the National Forest Foundation, in 1913, Hallie Daggett became the first female lookout in the Forest Service and spent fifteen years working in the Eddie Gulch fire tower in Klamath National Forest in northern California. My deceased brother Paul drove us through part of this forest near the border of Oregon back in the 90's, and the firs and incense cedars there were breathtaking.

When I returned from California a week ago, with visions of fire towers dancing in my head, I picked up The Messenger, our Sewanee, Tennessee newspaper, and voila! Right on the front page was a story about the Sewanee Fire Lookout Tower, a site that has been added to the National Register of Historic Places by the Tennessee Historical Commission. The site will be listed under the Tennessee Division of Forestry Fire Lookout Towers, 1933-75.

The Sewanee Lookout Tower is described as an Aeromotor MC 39 steel structure built from 1933-34 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and is in a complex that has several other buildings constructed in 1934: a crew cabin, a vehicle service platform, and the lookout operator's cabin. In 1940, a new crew building was built, and in 1950, a radio tower was added.

Although I have no intention of asking for a room at this local fire tower, we drove out to the site located on Fire Tower Road and took a look at the historic place this afternoon. It isn't quite high enough to provide the panoramic view that I imagine as part of fire tower charm, but I could envision it as a writer's retreat in a rustic setting. As I'm spooked by lightning, I don't think I'd like any of the western towers because of their susceptibility to lightning strikes. Towers in the West, located high on mountain tops, are natural conductors of lightning and have to be grounded with copper wires. The wires attract lightning strikes and cause the electrical charge to go deep into the ground where it is dispersed. However, I'd still hyperventilate if lightning hit any tower in which I was having a private retreat!

If you're interested in lookout towers in a National Forest, check out the recreation.gov site. Or if you're a Sewaneean, drive out to Fire Tower Road and take a look at a cultural resource that has been deemed worthy of preservation, but I don't think it's available for rental.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

VISITING IN DADDY WAH DIDDY

By Doug Dolde, public 
domain, Wikimedia

Although I'm fond of California, eight years passed before I finally made a trip west to visit my daughter in the high desert of Palmdale, California last week. I've missed my annual week of revivification in the warm, dry climate that clears up allergies, arthritis, and other maladies endemic to the Deep South. When I was eleven, I developed a liking for the climate and landscape of the desert during our sojourn in "Diddy Wah Diddy," my father's name for California.

I was shocked to see the skeletal-looking Joshua trees (my favorite species of desert trees) on the landscape, but shouldn't have been as the high desert in California is experiencing severe drought—the region has averaged only about four inches of rain in several years.

The Joshua tree has been called the "cultural signature of California's desert landscape," and grows only in the Mohave Desert. The seedlings of these picturesque trees are shriveling up and dying before they can put down roots, and scientists say that the trees may lose up to 90 percent of their range in the 800,000-acre Joshua Tree National Park by the end of this century if the drought persists.

My daughter lives in the Antelope Valley where water usage has been limited due to the drought, and water agencies have begun planning for more storage facilities to capture water available during wet seasons—some have even suggested building a Bay-Delta twin tunnel project and to limit the amount of water being diverted to protect the Delta smelt. Currently, my daughter is abiding by the mandate to limit outdoor water use, and her once-green yard reflects that limitation. She's considering graveling the entire expanse of front and side yards.

Big Bear Lake, CA

We also visited Big Bear Lake (elevation 6743 feet!) while traveling in Diddy Wah Diddy and found that a four-year drought has resulted in the lake being eleven feet down from full. For the last three years, this area has experienced a drought condition that resulted in fifty percent less than the average amount of inflow into the Lake.

But back to the Joshua tree, a succulent known as Yucca brevifolia. The tree grows up to forty feet high and lives more than 200 years, sporadically putting out yellow and white bell-shaped blossoms. Unfortunately, during the 1980's when Palmdale and Lancaster, aka the Antelope Valley area, were booming, 200,000 Joshua trees were replaced by housing tracts and shopping centers (my daughter lives on one of the housing tracts!). Then, during the 1990's, exotic grasses began to grow among the trees because of conditions triggered by El Nino, and the grasses caused the forests of Joshua trees to become vulnerable to brush fires.

As we drove through the Mohave, I kept lamenting about the stricken forests of trees and consoled myself with the fact that because the Joshua trees grow for about 200 years, I wouldn't witness large-scale die-offs during my lifetime, but I hated to see the demise of any of these desert beauties.

Mormons named the Joshua tree after the biblical character Joshua. They were traveling through the Cajon Pass to Utah in 1857, and it is said that they envisioned the trees as prophets and that their outstretched arms pointed the way to the promised land.

While traveling from Lake Tahoe back to Palmdale one summer, I scribbled twenty poems that included a brief notation about sighting a Joshua tree, a snippet entitled "Near Cartago, California: Population 75:"

Salt flats,

fields of uncommon snow,

blush at the edges

where brine shrimp wriggle;

and not a mile away

at the turn-off to Death Valley

Joshua trees suddenly jut up,

old men with arms linked

standing too close to each other

grumbling to the sun.

And if you want to read more about these dying desert attractions, there's a "tome" online entitled Joshua, My Love. The book was written by Mary Austin, a woman who fell in love with Joshua trees when she moved to Antelope Valley in 1937.