The Last Fire at Lonesome Pine Lookout

In the summer of 2009, I spent a season as a fire lookout at Lonesome Pine Tower in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The tower stood above a sea of lodgepole pine, with a faint dirt road winding up from the ranger station. My relief was a man named Hollis — sixty-eight years old, quiet, with a habit of leaving his boots unlaced. He had worked the tower for thirty years before retiring in 2008. But on the night of August 17th, after a string of dry lightning storms, I saw a light moving in the valley below. It was not a hiker. It was not a camper. It was Hollis, walking the old game trail with a lantern, heading toward a fire that had not yet been reported. I called his number. No answer. I called the ranger station. They said Hollis had been dead since February. This is the story of what I followed, what I found, and what I saw at the edge of the burn scar. #LonesomePineLookout #FireLookout #Hollis #OkanoganWenatchee #lodgepolepine #drylightning #August2009 #lantern #burnscar #gameTrail #deadmanwalking #disappearedpeaks #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #soloNarrated #TheTreeline #firewatcher #wildernessHorror Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo