By Bob Spiwak
Even with the warmer days in the 80s, the nights have been, for a week now, just plain cold. We had a low of 31 degrees last week and today, Monday, it was 37. The trees are beginning to turn, a few leaves are falling and the bears are sampling garbage cans. Fall definitely is in the air and it’s just about time to get the warm snuggies out of the closet.
We visited with Darrell Dufresne at the Early Winters Campground just a tad west of downtown Mazama yesterday. He and his wife, Vonnie, are the campground hosts. When I saw them a while ago when they first took on the task, Darrell was gingerly walking about with the aid of a walking stick. As with many of us of advancing age, he was having back problems, although not sufficient to keep him from his duties, and not enough so that the twosome could not greet campers, answer their questions, clean bathrooms and tend to trash and sites. He had, at that time, showed me his exercise device with which he adhered to daily along with a lot of walking.
Well it must have worked. I was surprised to see him walking around without the cane, and with no signs of suffering any pain. His big news was that he and Vonnie had hiked up to the Goat Peak lookout, where he had been on duty 60 years ago in 1954. “It was like a 60th anniversary,” he stated, “and I was determined to make the climb and see if I could still do it.” As Vonnie assumed the role of official photographer for the event, they did the trek in two hours. For the record, Darrell is now 86 years old.
They visited with Lightning Bill Austin, who again has the duty on Goat Peak. (He had been transferred this spring to another lookout farther south, but the fires got too close and he was hastened back to Goat Peak.)
Dufresne noted that the trail to the perch atop the 7,000-foot mountain had been changed since he worked there, but nothing major. The hardest part of the hike, both he and his wife stated, was the downward trek because of many washouts and loose rocks. “I was really concerned about him slipping on one and breaking an ankle,” Vonnie noted.
There was no heli-pad up there when Darrell worked the lookout. Asked how supplies were brought up, he laughed and said, “We packed it all in. The packs weighed at least 50 pounds.” This was probably good training when he became Winthrop’s postmaster, where the job required the ability to lift 70 pounds.
The pair are getting ready to move out as the campground will be shutting down as soon as the real freezes arrive and the water is turned off.
They will be back at their station next spring when the place opens again.
“I am just amazed at the volunteerism that exists in the Methow Valley,” wrote a friend on the coast. She was responding to an email from Ms. Gloria, who was one of 20 or so volunteers who went to Benson Creek on Sunday to assist the Tissell family, whose home was burned down by the fires. The effort was spearheaded by Bill and Sandy Moody, who posted a request for help at Tissells’ on the bulletin board a few days earlier. Of Craig’s three hay fields, one had been flooded and destroyed and the work seemed primarily to be getting the rocks and debris out of the other two adjacent fields.
