View from above

Ninemile lookout has been watching out for Mineral and Missoula County for 40 years

For 39 years, Virginia Stark has spent the summer months living up in what she calls her fishbowl. The cabin has windows built all around, is located eight miles up Stark Mountain and rises 20 feet up off the ground, which she says is meant to give her better a perspective. She’s 7,352 feet above sea level and 70 degrees in the afternoon is a hot day. It takes her about an hour to get down from the mountain to the Tarkio exit.

It’s Virginia’s 40th year of serving as a fire lookout. Aside from her years on Stark Mountain, Virginia spent her first year as a lookout on a mountain in the northeast corner of Oregon, near Enterprise.

“I’ve always been a bird watcher, a posey picker. I’m kind of a sky gazer. I enjoy watching the light change, the cloud shadows and formations,” Virginia said.

Virginia first got the idea of becoming a lookout when she was looking at a National Geographic Magazine in 1946. She was a teenager at the time and there was a story in the magazine about a woman who had been a lookout during World War II.

“It sort of took my fancy,” she said.

However, when Virginia first applied to become a fire lookout in 1960, she was denied because she was a woman.

“They weren’t taking women then because they also wanted a lookout to go and chase smoke and they’d be walking harsh distances,” Virginia recalled. “And that was understood. The woman’s movement was just starting to break open in the 60s.”

By 1970, times had changed and Virginia was eventually hired on to work with the forest service. She got to go out with the crews on marking trees and surveying.

“I was definitely a grunt, the bottom man on the totem pole. But when I was accepted to be a lookout, I was very excited,” she said. “I was thrilled.”

Virginia is just now a bit shy of her 80th birthday, but she still dutifully continues to work as a lookout during the summers. From Stark Mountain, her map works within a 20-mile radius.

“It’s a great plenty,” she commented.

Virginia looks just beyond the Superior town site and also just a bit shy of Lolo Creek. She looks a little ways beyond Frenchtown and the divide of the reservation.

“The interesting thing is you can see for hundreds of miles,” she said. “I can see tippy tops of some mountains in Glacier Park. It’s really neat.”

Her favorite viewpoint is the Mission Mountains up at St. Ignatius.

Virginia said that she reckons she makes an observation of the area every 10 to 15 minutes.

On the day that I talked to her via telephone— the mountain road would have been too rough for my car to make the trip—she mentioned that she was keeping an eye toward Ninemile, as there was a report of an abandoned campfire.

“People don’t realize how dry the ground is this year,” she said. “You get a hot day like this and a small ember escapes, it easily ignites other stuff.”

When she’s watching the mountains or making an observation, Virginia is looking for smoke. She said that sometimes it just comes in the form of a light blur against the forest and other times it appears as chimney smoke. She said that not only does she pay attention to reports of possible abandoned campfires, but weather reports as well. She said there is radar to tell them where the lightning strikes, but the radar doesn’t tell them whether or not a fire has been started.

“We didn’t have it back when I started,” Virginia mentioned. “I call it the magical lightning machine. But it does not tell you if fire starts, that’s why we’re here.”

Virginia said that today they have much better radio coverage as well and the use of cell phones. She said she sees a lot more roads in the mountains now, as well as power lines.

Virginia said there wasn’t a particular fire that she could remember as there have been so many in the time that she’s worked as a lookout. She said she recalls one time when there were many lightning strikes.

“There was a big orange glow at Siegel Pass,” she said. “It was so bright that when you looked through it with binoculars, the trees were silhouetted in front of it.”

Virginia said that it takes a certain type of person to serve as a lookout.

“You have to be independent and you better not want to be with the crowd,” she said. “And you have to be able to find something interesting to do that you can drop right away if need be.”

Virginia said that she has filled her time with a couple of different things throughout the years. In the years, she’s painted wooden figures for gift shops, but more lately has picked up puzzles.

“It has to be something where it won’t make a difference if you set it down. Jigsaw puzzles are just right,” Virginia said. “But there are different things that different people do.”

Virginia said that she doesn’t mind at all staying up on the mountain during the summer as it’s the place that she prefers to be. She said she envies the lookouts who work in Arizona as they might be up on top of a post for up to eight months, which is longer than the season that she works. She said typically fire season in this area lasts until Labor Day, but noted it really just depends on the wetness levels and so on.

“I’m sure it might get boring,” Virginia said, “but I enjoy being up away from town.”

From her post at Stark, Virginia said that she sees lots of wildlife. Along with the deer and elk, she said that she’s seen mountain lions, coyotes, ground squirrels and chipmunks. She said she’s only seen a bear on two occasions as they tend to stay down lower where the huckleberries grow.

As for retirement, Virginia said that she plans to continue to serve as a lookout as long as she is able. She doesn’t think she’ll get fifty years in though. She said that the only women she’s known to put in fifty years as a lookout started when they were in high school.

“For me to get fifty years in, well, they won’t want me when I’m ninety,” Virginia said. “Each year, I just wait and see how I’m feeling. I think after I quit, I’d like to be a relief and just go up for a couple days at a time.”