Photography

Someone had written it out by hand on pale blue paper. Snyder worked Sourdough Peak lookout while Kerouac was in Desolation Peak. Philip Whalen was in a third lookout in the same ranger district. That fire season there were three "Beat Poets" working fire lookouts on three of the most majestic peaks in the Upper Skagit region of the North Cascades.

But Gary Snyder only worked one season because the US Forest Service found out about his previos affiliation with the "Wobblies," and he was blackballed from any future work with the USFS. But his boss loved him: "That's one calm son-of-a-bitch." The mule skinner that packed Gary in on mules at the first of the season said that all Snyder took to eat was a fifty pound bag of rice and a gallon of soy sauce. Snyder melted snow for water to cook the rice.

At age 94, Snyder is one of the few Beat Poets who is still alive. He is the only one alive of the three (Kerouac, Whalen, and Snyder) who worked fire lookouts that season in the early 1950s.