On the lookout

Leif Haugen spends his summers in solitary mountain-top firefighter lookouts, a lifestyle that has been captured in a short documentary called “The Lookout” that’s screening at film festivals across the country.

Haugen, 41, has been a lookout for the last 18 years, overlooking grand vistas in Glacier National Park and most recently, on the Flathead National Forest’s Thoma lookout above the North Fork Flathead River drainage a few miles south of the Canadian border.

“Being in the park, it’s an incredible setting,” said Haugen, who works as a carpenter and builder when he’s not in the lookout. “But the setting is just as beautiful on the other side of the river.”

The documentary came about when New York filmmaker Brian Bolster was backpacking through Glacier National Park and ended up visiting the Swiftcurrent Lookout.

“He started thinking this would be an interesting project,” Haugen said.

Bolster approached park officials and ended up concluding that filming outside the park would be better suited for his project. He was referred to the Flathead National Forest and Haugen, who had spent years working at Glacier’s Numa Lookout before going to the Forest Service and the Thoma Lookout.

Before that happened, Haugen was helping Flathead Forest officials assess what maintenance work needed to done at the Thoma Lookout, which hadn’t been staffed since 1973.

“And in that process I decided that I would love to staff that if the Forest Service chose to do that,” Haugen said. “2010 was the first year that the Flathead chose to staff it again and that’s when I moved from Numa across the valley to Thoma.”

In September 2010, Bolster followed and filmed Haugen’s daily duties over six days and five nights.

“I had a hunch that fire lookouts have a special connection to not only the environment around them but also to the structure in which they live and work,” Bolster said. “As I was shooting this project, I quickly learned that fire lookouts and the individuals that staff them are an important part of our nation’s history, and I really wanted to showcase their work to audiences who may not be familiar with their unique, oftentimes unnoticed role in fire management.”

Despite satellite and computer technology that have provided new tools in fire management, Haugen said lookout staffers still play an important role, usually working on 10-day hitches from June through September.

“Fire lookouts are the quietest aspect of fire management and many people may think we don’t staff them anymore,” Haugen said. “I hope this film helps to show that the lookout program is strong and well-used in the fire management program, especially in the Flathead area. I’m very proud that my lookout friends, despite all having very different experiences based on the variety of settings they work in, have seen it and feel that the film does a good job of capturing the day in the life of a lookout experience.”

Haugen said he does indeed enjoy the solitude, and he has an affinity for the historic lookouts that he has cared for with his carpentry and building skills. The Flathead Forest has four lookouts that are staffed during fire season, and several others that are staffed on an as-needed basis. Most of them were built between the 1930s and 1970s and require continuous maintenance to remain operational.

Haugen said he has DVDs of “The Lookout” documentary, but he was also able to see it at the Big Sky Film Festival in Missoula.

The documentary is playing at other film festivals around the country, but so far there are no arrangements for it to screen in the Flathead Valley.

More on the documentary can be found on Bolster’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheLookoutMovie