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Governor’s Conference on Aging: Inspired Aging – Innovations in Health & Wellness
– pages 30-37
Alex Hasson Is Glacier Park’s Eyes In The Sky By Gail Jokerst www.gailjokerst.com
Although you are unlikely ever to see an ad like the one above, the description does portray the ideal person to staff a fire lookout. It hints at the challenges a lookout faces and indicates why some folks find one stint of mountaintop living more than enough. However, for people like Alex “Buck” Hasson, who serves as Glacier National Park’s eyes in the sky above Swiftcurrent Pass, coexisting with curious critters and lightning is no hardship. For the past five summers, this retired Burlington Northern railroader has manned Swiftcurrent Fire Lookout to help keep the park flame-free. And he plans to return in 2014 for another volunteer season. It is a post that suits Alex and his appreciation of wilderness and wildlife as comfortably as his favorite blue jeans. “Living in the clouds is a whole other world. At 8,436 feet, it’s intense. Every day you live with the wind. It gets your attention. Rocks can fly through the windows at 70 mph and it snows every month of the year up there,” recounts Alex, who thrives on the demands of the area as well as its roughhewn beauty. “I see a little of everything. Alex Hasson on a bad hair day in the Logging I’ve watched wolverines, mink, Lake area of Glacier National Park returning weasels, and black bears – after a week of tracking wily, wary, wolver- even a mountain lion stalking ines – the wolverines won! [Photo provided a goat. For two or three weeks, by Alex Hasson] before moving on to different pastures, mountain goats literally live with me,” notes Alex. “As many as five kids have played on the porch in the morning. And during evenings, I can walk along the ridgeline and watch the moon rise while the sun sets. It’s so peaceful and silent then.” In addition to staying watchful for potential conflagrations throughout this heavily forested region, Alex industriously maintains the inside and outside of the 78-year-old one-room building, which doubles as his residence and workplace. “When I began volunteering here, I was told ‘this is your home’ and I took that to heart. I take pride that this is my house for the summer,” says Alex, who makes his own repairs and annually paints the lookout when he is not busy communicating weather and fire information to park personnel. The tools of his trade are both historic and contemporary. At the older end of the spectrum is the Osborne fire finder, a type of (Continued on page 77)