Back in the late 1980s, my wife, Sally, and I were in Idaho visiting our daughter and family when this crazy idea started to form in my head. Northern Idaho is such a great place, and I thought it would be fun to vacation in one of those forest lookout towers on a remote mountaintop in the area. Our son-in-law worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the Clearwater National Forest, and I could ask him who to talk to, or if it was even possible to rent a lookout.
The following summer, we hit the road in Idaho and were on our way to our lookout tower. We had left our daughter and son-in-law’s place earlier that morning, having stopped by the night before to exchange our car for their four-wheel-drive truck. We had been told the road was rough and it would be a half-day drive to get there. We arrived early in the afternoon, but spotted our home on the very top of the hill miles before we got there.
We parked to start unloading, and Sally went up first. Using the hoist attached to the catwalk that went all the way around the tower, I sent all our gear, including our Coleman ice box, up to Sally, who unloaded it and sent it back down for the next load.
The Forest Service had issued us a two-way radio with fresh batteries, which we were supposed to use in case of an emergency — or to call them if we happened to spot a fire. Little did we know then that the radio would play such an important part in our lives later in the week.