Fire Lookout Lives in Secluded ‘360-Degree World’ Atop Peak

Her name is Soaring Jenkins. She lives alone in a 13-by-13-foot glass house on top of this remote, mile-high mountain reached by a tortuous two-mile, almost-straight-up twisting trail.

She has no electricity or indoor plumbing.

Once a week the 115-pound, 5-foot, 7-inch Jenkins carries her food and supplies up the steep, rocky footpath except for extra-heavy items like 20-gallon cartons of water delivered by mules once a month.

Singing, Playing Harp

Jenkins, 37, spends several hours a day singing and playing Irish and Welsh songs on a harp as she sits on top of Cone Peak, said to be one of the sheerest mountains in the West. The mountain spills into the Pacific Ocean midway between Big Sur and San Simeon.

Between songs Jenkins scours the skies in all directions looking for puffs of smoke.

A U.S. Forest Service lookout on Cone Peak for five years, Jenkins is one of a vanishing breed.

In the early 1950s the Forest Service had 5,060 manned fire lookout towers across America, 3,470 of them erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Today there are fewer than 600, fewer than 100 of them in California.

Satellites, aerial surveillance, computerized maps of lightning strikes, commercial and private pilots flying over the mountains, people with civilian band radios driving on far more mountainous roads than in the past are all able to spot the fires as quick as the fire lookouts except in extremely isolated areas like Cone Peak.

“I live in a 360-degree world. I see the curve in the sky. I feel the curve of the earth up here. I can see Mt. Whitney on a clear clear day, see 88 miles out to sea. I’m always the last one to see the sun set around here,” Jenkins said.

Indian Prayer

Her bed is four feet off the ground at window level so she can see at night. “If there are lightning strikes, I wake up with them. On a full moon I wake up squinting from the brightness,” she added. She told how she says an Indian prayer when the sun awakens her each new day:

“Beauty’s before me. Beauty’s behind me. Beauty’s all around me. Beauty’s above me. Beauty’s below me. Beauty’s inside me.”

Were you given the name Soaring at birth, she is asked. “Oh, no. I always hated my first name. I won’t tell you what it was.”

She spots and reports whiffs of smoke, mostly from lightning strikes from time to time during the seven months she lives on the mountain each year. She also has a house in Big Sur. She directs firefighters by radio to fires. She has a CB and occasionally gets calls from people reporting a car over the cliff on California 1 or a fishing boat in distress will radio for help. She relays the calls to the Los Padres National Forest dispatcher.

“It was a baptism of fire my first month here in 1985. There was a huge fire all through these mountains. I relayed information over the radio to firefighting crews. I couldn’t see as the fire approached for the dense smoke,” she recalled.

“The lead plane of an air attack crew radioed that a helicopter better fly to Cone Peak right away or it would be too late to get me out. The fire was closing in. I was sitting on the floor operating the radios. I couldn’t see out the window. I was on the floor where it was cooler. I was having a tough time breathing because of the smoke.”

Flown to Safety

A helicopter flew her to safety. The forest on Cone Peak was charred. She later received a certificate of commendation for her heroic work during the fire and a $150 award. “They flew me back here five days later. Everything was black. Luckily my tower was not burned.”

She said she looks in every direction about every five to 10 minutes. “When I read a book, I turn a page and look. When I play the harp, I keep looking around. The first week on the job I was a nervous wreck. I looked every minute. You have to learn to pace yourself. You can’t be too hyper about it.”

Although the trail leading to her peak is reached by a seldom-traveled 13-mile one-lane winding mountainous road, the last five miles dirt, a few hikers manage to find their way to the mountaintop.

“A guy from Italy was here yesterday. Being here is being both alone and being social. Being alone helps you sort out things deep inside,” she related.

“Being social means being friendly with strangers who hike up. Sometimes I go for days alone. Some weekends as many as a dozen people will hike up here, mostly men, 93% of them real nice, 6% jerks and 1% weirdos who can be dangerous.

“Still, the odds are better than in the city. The trail is a killer. Many who try are wiped out before they’re halfway up. I have yet to see anyone arrive who is not dripping wet.”

It takes her an hour-and-a-half to walk up each week loaded down with a backpack full of necessities weighing at least 50 pounds.

She is off the mountain two days a week. She is paid for a 40-hour week although she looks through her binoculars from sunup to sundown searching for smoke. Her pay is $6.75 an hour, “high in job satisfaction, low in wages,” as she describes it.

One-Room Home

Her one-room home is combination kitchen, bedroom and living room. It has a propane refrigerator, stove, heater and lights. The propane is flown in once a year on a helicopter.

Twice a day she radios weather information. She sleeps with the radio going all night and is tuned in only to those calls that affect her. “I spent a year studying Zen meditation. Even when I’m sleeping I’m always present and know what’s going on and respond immediately to calls for me.”

She is never really alone, of course. Swallowtail and monarch butterflies and hummingbirds share the top of the mountain. On the trail she encounters deer, quail, doves, chipmunks, squirrels.

“One night I was sitting watching the sunset and felt something nibbling on my shoe. Eeekkk! It was a wood rat. What a horrible feeling. Once I killed a rattlesnake at the tower,” said Jenkins, describing the local wildlife.

She is a vegetarian, drinks juices, eats a lot of potatoes, sweet potatoes, salads and other vegetables.

Jenkins was a teacher before she became a Forest Service lookout. “Living here has made me a better person,” she mused. “I’ve had the same boyfriend 10 years, a Forest Ranger. We’re going to get married in May.

“Come fall, it’s time to go down the mountain to my home in Big Sur, and I’m ready to leave. By then it’s cold and blustery up here. Every spring I can hardly wait to return. I plan to be on the lookout on Cone Peak until I’m at least 87.”