Jumbo Lookout
August 7th, 2025
I once asked a group of fifth graders what wilderness meant to them. A few responses stuck out to me. “It’s like a little tingle inside,” one said. And “It protects our soul.” It sure can mean a lot of things, but I would have to say those descriptions are pretty fitting. Although it is a federally designated piece of land that remains protected from development where rivers and creeks flow freely, animals roam, where people go backpack, float, fish, etc. It’s all those and more. Sitting up in one of the most remote lookouts in the lower 48, I am reminded just how vast this place really is. The Bob Marshall Wilderness offers views of winding river valleys, to peaks soring above. It brings me great joy knowing people fought to protect this spectacular land. The wolves I saw in the meadow just the other morning are free to wander as they please. Elk, deer, foxes, bears, alike have countless miles of streams, forests, and prairie to enjoy. Wilderness is a place. Many places. But it also evokes certain feelings. It provides the “sanity of man” as I heard someone once say. Feelings such as solitude, loneliness, pure joy, and appreciation. It brews passion in people that I don’t see anywhere else in the world. Places such as the Bob need to continue to be protected, fought for, and cared for. It’s imperative that the streams and rivers remain crisp and clean and full of fish, forests free, and wildlife abundant. I’m not sure who or where I would be without wilderness, as I do truly feel shaped by the places I’ve seen and the people I’ve been lucky enough to share them with.
“So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breath deep of that yet sweet and lucid air. Sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space”
-Edward Abbey
P.S. Sorry for the typos. This typewriter ain’t easy to use.
My good friend and former co-worker, Emily, wrote this submission a few weeks ago and sent it to me. But she didn’t send it the regular way, she sent it via snail mail. I know, odd for a 25 year old to send a letter to a friend in the mail but this is how we communicate during the summer trail season. Emily works for the USFS as Wilderness Trails Technician, and spends the entire 6 month season, in the backcountry. Living there without cell service, electricity, or even a land line. She and a few other folks live at a place called Schafer Meadows Guard Station in the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in northwest Montana. Theres no grocery store or mail service out where she lives and the nearest road is an 18 mile hike, and then a 2 hour drive to cell service. So in order to communicate and get food, a string of Forest Service mules come in every other week. That’s how I got this letter from her. Because of recent Forest Service budget cuts, the trail crew members take turns manning the sum of the remote fire lookouts in the Bob during high fire danger. Emily wrote me this Voices of the Wilderness submission/ letter on a typewriter, while manning one of the most remote fire lookouts in the lower 48. It is multiple days hike to the top and looks over almost the entire wilderness portion south fork of the flathead drainage. I hope you enjoyed it.
-Savannah
