November 12

4.5 C and overcast.
The skies cleared as the ceremony at the cenotaph started yesterday. Once more the number of veterans was smaller. The crowd attending though was bigger than other years, I would imagine about a thousand which is good for our small town.

Here is one of my short stories from a segment of a section about Lookout men.

G

eorge

  George was a long time Lookout man on Fraser Mountain near Fraser Lake.  I only met him a couple of times, but talked to him on the radio many times.  I think he had been a Forestry Patrolman in the early days as his knowledge of the Fort Fraser and Vanderhoof districts was phenomenal.  When you heard George’s deep resonant voice on our radios, you pictured a big strapping man perhaps bearded and bushy haired.  He was about 5’6, 130 pounds and bald as a billiard ball!

   In as much that he had a wife and family, he was a bit of an exception to the bachelor premise.  But in the four years I was in occasional contact, I never knew him to take any of his family up to his tower with him.

He actually worked in the Fort Fraser District but from his summer aerie he covered much of the south west of the Vanderhoof district where I worked.

One day both he and another Lookout (Sinkut) reported a fire just on the edge of the Nulki Indian Reserve. This was great because their two bearings intersected and locating would be much easier than with just a single bearing.  The location was about twenty-five miles from George and 10 miles from Sinkut.

I proceeded to the fire area and as luck would have it there were old roads and trails all over.  I knew I was close but it was flat country and I was looking for just a wisp of smoke.

  After about a half hour of searching with no luck I called Sinkut Lookout but he could not offer any more help.  Then George came on the air, asked if I could read him okay then told me to describe to him just where I was.  I told him which road I had turned off onto and how far I had gone along that road and that I could see an old shack just off to the north about 200 yards.  He replied as follows, “ I know where you are, that shack is Mac Peters old place. Go back the way you came until you see a trail going south – there’s a big rock right where it starts.  Go south along that trail about twenty rods and you will see a big ol’ black stump on yer right, go to that stump and the fire should be about five rods to yer left.”

  Well I figured my leg was being pulled a bit, I only had a vague idea how far a rod was, but I had nothing to lose.  I went back along the road stopped at the first big rock I saw; sure enough there was a trail. I grabbed a shovel and a pulaski out of my toolbox and started down the trail. Within moments there was an old fir stump blackened by fire just off the trail. I went to the stump and around it and there just in front of me was a small fire smoldering in some brush and the duff!  I searched around and at first could find no evidence of how it had started.  Then a few feet away I found where a single pine had been hit and smashed by what was obviously a lightning strike.  There was a furrow along the ground from the pine’s stump to the tiny fire.

  After I dug the fire out, went back to my truck and called George and congratulated him on his guiding me there.  He just said, “That’s okay, glad to help.”

  A couple months later I had occasion to be in the Fort Fraser office when George came in.  I said, ‘Hey George I’ve been thinking about that fire you guided me to back in July.  There’s been other fires in that same spot hasn’t there?”

  He looked at me and grinned sort of slyly and said, “I wondered if you would figure it out. Yep every few years there is a strike right around there.  That old fir stump, well that happened about 20 years ago, I put that fire out!”