Bo Zarts

Bo Zarts's Journal

May 15, 2021

Postcard from Marfa

Marfa Texas from the St. George Hotel
© 2019 Bo Zarts Studio

May 14, 2021

This is the most terrifying photo I have ever taken .. and the story behind it.

(Notice Nick on the cot, and my gear helter-skelter in the fire lookout - totally against my normal sense of order. I am sure I was already carbon monoxide intoxicated when I took this photo.)

This is the most frightening photo I have ever taken. And it was almost the last. It makes my heart stop to look at it now, almost eleven years since that day in May 2010. To think how much Nick trusted me then makes me want to weep. I put him in grave danger, and he - in turn - saved my life.

It was a flat, cold Saturday afternoon in late May on East Butte, in the high desert of central Oregon, as I pulled up under the fire lookout tower after a four-day, 2400 mile drive from South Carolina. Tomorrow was the first day of fire season, and I needed to get my gear unpacked and up the sixty steps to the lookout. The elevation on the butte was 6400 feet, and the location was deep in relative wilderness, with a commanding view of the entire southeast corner of the Deschutes National Forest.

I heard a loud electronic beeping from the tower, thirty feet above me, when I shut down the Tacoma’s engine and opened the door. I opened the back door for Nick, but he wouldn’t jump out - he hated electronic beeping. I left it open (he would follow, I was sure), and I headed up the lookout steps for the first time in seven months. I unlocked the padlock on the heavy trap door at the top of the last flight of stairs, and put my shoulder into opening the beast. The beeping was louder, and definitely from the inside of the lookout. I was moderately curious as to what it was.

Members of the fire battalion had already been out, a day or two earlier, to open up the shutters and ready the building for the 2010 fire season and me. Theoretically, all I had to do was get my gear up the stairs and unpacked, rustle up some supper, and - maybe after a short hike with Nick - get a good night sleep. Sunday - the first day of the new pay period, thus the first day of my fire season - would be a busy day of aligning equipment, checking out radios, and setting up before Memorial Day crowds started any fires.

Through the trap door and up onto the catwalk, finally. The wind was whipping and the temperature was dropping. It would be snowing in a few hours, for sure. The beeping was ear piercing now. I fumbled through the keys on my ring and found the Yale to the lookout door. I got the door opened and was surprised by a blast of heat. Someone must have wanted it nice and toasty for my arrival.

The source of the beeping was immediately obvious: one of two carbon monoxide alarms. I turned off the heat, and opened the windows. The beeping continued, so I moved the alarm from the wall to outside in fresh air. The beeping stopped. Now only the wind noise. And 5,4,3,2,1 .. Nick running up the steps. As soon as the noise stopped, Nick was on his way. OK. Mental note: I need to check out both CO alarms before firing up the propane heater again.

But first, I needed to make a few trips to my truck for essentials. Number one being water for Nick and me. I went down and brought up two 5-gallon “cubies” of water (5gal @ 8#/gal = 40 pounds x2 = 80 pounds, but better balance with two). I fixed Nick a big stainless steel pan of cold water. Man, he was thirsty!

I immediately started down the steps again, and this time Nick followed me. I started unloading gear from my truck, more or less prioritizing it for my first night. Sleeping bags. Warm clothes, food, dog food, then maybe some camera gear .. binoculars, for sure (might get a fire start somewhere tonight - and there were prescribed fires up near the 25 road that I needed to watch). Computer .. I need to send some emails. As I sorted gear and shuttled it up the sixty steps, Nick ran around the butte exploring where he had left off in October 2009.

After several trips up and down, I started feeling weak. I assumed it was the altitude (6400 feet), but it had never bothered me before. After a few more trips, I was feeling downright nauseated. Damn. I had a steak to cook for tonight. Forget that.

Finally, I called Nick. He bounded up the steps and hit the water bowl again. After some chow he hopped on the cot, where I had already spread out a sleeping bag and a poncho liner (purloined from the US Army in Vietnam). It was now 26 degrees outside, and with the windows still open, very cold in the lookout. I closed the windows.

I was very sleepy, but I knew I needed to attend to the heat and CO detector issues. I brought the detector back in from the catwalk, and put fresh batteries in it and in the second detector. Almost immediately, they both started beeping. Loud! Nick was totally freaked. So was I. The propane heat had been off for several hours. WTF? I moved the detectors back out onto the catwalk and fresh air. Then I then turned off the propane to the heater. No heat at all tonight, unless I lit the oven. No .. no heat. Figure this out tomorrow. Brain fog.

After a few minutes of silence from the carbon monoxide detectors, I moved them back inside. Almost immediately BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP from both damn detectors! What the hell? The heat is basically disconnected from the propane tank, which is on the ground, away from the lookout tower.

By then the snow had started. OK. I opened the windows and door again, and finally the beeping stopped. We’ll sleep in the cold with the doors and windows open.

I unlaced my boots and crawled into two sleeping bags, one inside the other. I pulled my wool stocking cap down over my ears. Nick snuggled in the crook of my knees. I guess that’s when I went to sleep. THIS IS WHERE THIS STORY SHOULD END, FOR BOTH NICK AND ME!

Something was shaking me. Somebody was shaking me. But I was cold. I wanted to sleep. Still shaking me. Shaking. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! WTF!? I looked up and could see Nick’s silhouette on me .. I could feel his sharp paws on my chest and groin. Nick was shaking me. Or he was shaking on top of me.

I jumped up. Both carbon monoxide detectors were beeping full blast. It was 23-degrees outside .. it was 25-degrees inside, with snow blowing in the open, screen-less windows. I remembered that the heat was off. I remember that I had not gone to bed until the detectors were quiet. What time is it? 12:30 AM. Jesus.

We are out of here Buddyboy! Nick was shaking .. almost convulsive. Cold? Fear? Carbon Monoxide? Who knows.

I got Nick out of the lookout and down to the truck. I cranked the truck and started the heater on HIGH for Nick, who was now in his kennel cage in the back seat. I went back up the stairs to get some gear OUT of the lookout before driving back into Bend, because I knew this son-of-a-bitch was going to be shut down for quite a while .. days if not weeks.

It took me thirty minutes to clean my gear out of the lookout and lock up for an extended time away. By the time I got behind the wheel, the truck was warm and Nick seemed to have calmed down. It was 1:15 AM as we started down the FS-750 road to the lock gate a couple of miles on the southeast aspect of the butte. The skiff of snow on the top of the butte gave way to a wet road and blowing snow on the way down.

So Nick and I made our way down to the forest floor, and out a rat-maze of fire roads on our way to Bend (I did call ahead for a hotel room). The washboard of the China Hat road finished waking me up. On the FS-25 road, we drove through blowing snow and smoke from a prescribed burn .. with stumps glowing on one side of the road, and deer bounding across in the smoke and snow. It was like the movie “Apocalypse Now.”

It took us over two hours to get into Bend, and checked into a hotel. I set an alarm for 8 AM, my scheduled time to go into service at the lookout, to get up and call my supervisor.

And yes, the shit hit the fan. My boss and his boss went out to the unmanned lookout on Monday morning with carbon monoxide detecting instruments. The CO level inside the lookout, with the heat disconnected, was 288 ppm! Lethal concentration.

And what was the culprit? The propane refrigerator. That never crossed my (by then) addled brain. The refer was spewing carbon monoxide into the lookout all the while. And I though I had flown into The Mouth of the Cat ‘O Death on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Nothing as close as this.

But Nick saved my life that night. No doubt in my mind. Thankfully, he lived another eight good years. I tried to pay him back. But in the end, I couldn’t.

May 13, 2021