Exposing the innards of my '93 fire lookout journal to the world --
an experiment on the cumulative effect of hundreds of first-drafts upon kind readers' psyche.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Wind velocity readings, lookout style
When the wind is out of the West, and I pee off the catwalk to the East, I notice that you can track windspeed via landmarks. Wind 0 - 5 mph -- hit the grass. Wind 8-12 mph -- hits rhododendron. Wind 15 - 20 mph -- hits edge or over the edge of the butte.
HA! I rode out a night of 70+ steady with 100+ gusts in that tower, and it scared the bejeezus out of me. But spending the rainy night on the ground wasn't looking too hot either -- the tower had been up through that and worse for a long time so I opted to stay up in the tower. Scary though.
No way to edit that: I'm thinking it was 50 MPH with 70+ gusts now. I'll have to see when it comes up in the journal to verify info. It was this same summer so it will pop up some time before this project is done.
This is a journal transcribed from my first summer in a fire lookout in the Mt. Hood national forest. I wrote daily up at Hickman Butte -- pages and pages of stuff. Now none of this was ever intended to be shown to anybody, much less posted on the web. But I figured it might be interesting, and being a journal it is something I can type up sequentially, in chronological order. Maybe there is a character arc hidden in there I never saw; hell I don't know. So here it is. I am not promising word-for-word transliteration of the dam thing either -- I'll cut as much as seems reasonable, and leave in everything I possibly can without ruining (too badly) the English language or my so-far spotless prison record.
Enjoy
The Homestead
Hickman Butte Lookout, 1993
For those of you just starting reading
This is a journal, and best read sequentially.
Click Here for the first post, then just hit "newer post" at the bottom left of the page to get the next day. I wish I could set this blog to run backwards, but I haven't figured that one out yet.
When you return to the site, you can scroll down and click on the Blog Archive and begin reading on whatever date you want.
I'm a 38-year-old recent college graduate in Biology, husband, and new father, recovering from a career as an electrician. These blogs are intended for recreational use only -- any medicinal benefits are purely coincidental.
Email me with any rants, concerns or questions.
3 comments:
And at 35-45 MPH, you and your urine are flying off the building together....
HA! I rode out a night of 70+ steady with 100+ gusts in that tower, and it scared the bejeezus out of me. But spending the rainy night on the ground wasn't looking too hot either -- the tower had been up through that and worse for a long time so I opted to stay up in the tower. Scary though.
No way to edit that: I'm thinking it was 50 MPH with 70+ gusts now. I'll have to see when it comes up in the journal to verify info. It was this same summer so it will pop up some time before this project is done.
Post a Comment