In the Colville Indian Reservation, we turned off at a road with a sign labeling it as the road to the Moses Mountain Lookout. We drove some 7 or 8 miles up a torn-up dirt road, with a dry landscape of scraggly trees not unlike the Black Hills of South Dakota for its spookiness, stopping when it was too tough for Tommy the Truck to go on. We walked the last 2.5 to 3 miles on a wild, lonely road covered in tracks and scat of large critters, to find an enormous fire lookout and some space-aged weather equipment. The walk up was spooky and we wondered about the presence of bear, cougar, and Big Foot. But somehow we were comforted by the presence of a gravestone we found along the way:
Truman D. Picard 1947-1985
Father-Husband-Friend
We discovered, with a little help from Google, that Truman was a forest lookout and worked on the Intertribal Timber Council, which is a consortium of over 60 tribes that is dedicated to protecting the natural resources on Native American lands. A scholarship is given in his name to Native Americans seeking degrees in Natural Resources. Somehow knowing that the place was sacred made us feel safe.
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