On a Montana mountaintop, this lookout watches for fire – and hope
“Once I start to hear the lightning rods buzz, I have to get back inside,” Samsara Duffey warns as she watches black clouds advance from the southwest toward this windswept 8,000-foot peak. “Sometimes the hair on my forehead will tickle [with electricity]. That’s when I know I better find cover.”
A moment later, the air vibrates, and a static hum reaches her ears. Sheets of gray rain across the upper South Fork of the Sun River advance toward Ms. Duffey’s 1962 U.S. Forest Service lookout building here in “The Bob” – Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. Her border collie, Mae, leads the way up the steps and through the tattered screen door.
The southeast wind picks up and finds the cracks between the wood and 107 windowpanes. Each fragile piece was carried on a mule up the winding 6-mile trail from the valley. The radio sputters with trail crews checking in.
“The cabin shakes when the wind hits 25 miles per hour,” she says, leaning against the shuttering western wall. “I think I can feel it coming.”
As the room darkens beneath the clouds, her grin anticipates the collision between the storm and her shelter, giving away her comfort with wilderness extremity.
For the past 26 wildfire seasons, since the age of 21, Ms. Duffey has served as a fire lookout for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. Decades of legendary solo bushwhacking trips across ridges and drainages have resulted in intimate knowledge of her fire district and beyond. This “ground truthing” helps her pinpoint smoke and flames with acute accuracy.
After watching the American West burn summer after summer from her perch above tree line, she’s developed a complex view of environmental responsibility, informed by a palpable joy in the wilderness and ethical introspection on the interactions between the human and nonhuman
world.
“This place has a value in and of itself without humans. The intrinsic value of wilderness is wilderness,” she says. “My
