Today there was an article in the New York Times about this guy, and told his story. I really found it interesting yet strange that someone would devote thier live to living alone in the middle of nowhere. In the article is a link to his website, where there is an AMAZING gallery of pictures.

ON SADDLEBACK MOUNTAIN, Calif. — Walk into Mike Gates’s summer home here and the first thing you notice — the only thing you could possibly notice —is the view. The job isn’t for everyone, but searching for fires from a perch a mile high suits Mike Gates and his frequent visitor, Prairie Rose, who fell in love with him on this very spot. With a wraparound vista broken only by the occasional hummingbird, Mr. Gates has 25-mile visibility on a decent day and more than twice that on a superlative one. The sunrises are pretty enough to make the cold worthwhile, and the sunsets would make a vampire sad to see the day go. But Mr. Gates doesn’t really come to the top of Saddleback Mountain — at the corner of 6,698 feet and the middle of nowhere —to look at the horizon or the hummingbirds, at the sunrise or the sunset. He comes to look for smoke. For the last 21 years, Mr. Gates has been a fire lookout, a sky-high sentry at the front line in the battle against wildfires, which have burned more than five million drought-parched acres around the country this year. Armed with four pairs of binoculars, he spends almost every waking hour prowling a narrow catwalk outside his 14-foot-square shack, scanning the day — and night — for nature’s surest sign that something is ablaze. 

I guess you have to have some sort of hobby while sitting there watching for fires, so he has photography. You definitely need to go check out his site, there are some amazing pictures there! http://www.pbase.com/pygmyhippo

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.