\ip from the windward areas beyond the confines of the Forest reserva- 

 tion a thin pall of smoke. Higgins Lake, two miles behind the watch- 

 man, but looking very near from the height of the hill, was dimly ob- 

 scured. 



GUARDED STATE PROPERTY. 



The watchman worried not about the fires beyond the state forest 

 limits, only watched to see if he could trace progression dangerously 

 near to state property. So the afternoon hours drifted along. Sud- 

 denly from the foot of the tower the red sweater was seen coming 

 down one steel leg of the structure, where loops of iron rod give a 

 foot and hand hold. He went into a booth on the ground inside the 

 tower, a shanty like the ones housing the telephones along an inter- 

 urban railway line. He got headquarters on the phone and reported 

 smoke inside the reservation. He gave" an approximate location, using 

 a jargon that sounded like a surveyor's statement. 



What next happened could not be seen by the visitor, even by 

 climbing up the tower, for it went on beneath the screen of inter- 

 vening forests. This, however, was what was happening: 



An automobile loaded with men and tools was putting out from 

 headquarters several miles away and tearing through the sand roads 

 toward the smudge which the watchman had reported. After going 

 two or three miles over the twisting trails it struck into a straight 

 strip of clearing that looked like a road but was not a road only for 

 forest fire fighters going at top speed to a fire. This was a fire line. 



Sixteen feet wide, with a plowed and harrowed strip 10*^ feet 

 wide through the center of them, these fire lines stretch for many 

 miles through the state forest, criss-crossing in geometrical precision. 

 They are run on section, quarter-section and eighth-of-a-section lines. 



It is told of a Russian Czar that, asked what route he would be 

 pleased to have the then projected railway from St. Petersburg to 

 Moscow follow, he laid a ruler on the map between the two cities, 

 drew a line along the ruler and said: "Put it there." 



TRACTOR DOES THE WORK. / 



That is how the state forester runs his fire lines. Over hill and 

 down dale they go, skipping the swamps, never rounding them. On 

 the Higgins Lake and nearby reserves a -huge caterpillar tractor does 

 the work, tearing out small trees and stumps, plowing the middle 

 strip and keeping it harrowed. Elsewhere the work is done by 

 horse-drawn equipment. 



The automobile with the men and tools came upon the tiny fire in 

 the grass near a point where a fire line crossed a highway. Perhaps 

 somebody going past in an automobile had emptied a pipe or thrown 

 out a cigar butt as he jogged past this spot. From the fire line the 

 "smoke chasers" brought shovelsful of sand and smothered out the 

 fire. It had gotten into the base of a dry old stump. They filled the 

 crevices of the stump with fine sand; and the fire, out, had to stay out. 



That is the forest fire fighter's material for fighting dirt. That is 

 the explanation of the 16-foot fire lines and the lO^-foot plowed strip 

 along their centers. 



When the forest fire fighter has to plunge into an unbroken 

 wilderness of brush to cope with an incipient blaze by blanketing it 

 out or by starting controllable backfires to starve it out, he works 

 under a terrific handicap. By the time he gets ground broken and 

 earth available the small blaze may have gotten beyond control. When 



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