Bo Zarts
Bo Zarts's JournalProspectors' Delight
Fire Lookout Tower in the Bitterroot Mountains
Idaho Panhandle - July 22, 2025
©2025 Bo Zarts Studio
Idaho Panhandle: After the Storm
Bitterroot Range along the Idaho/Montana boundary - July 22, 2025
©2025 Bo Zarts Studio
Storm at Sunset in the Bitterroot Range
Idaho Panhandle - July 29, 2025
©2025 Bo Zarts Studio
I put my wilderness fire lookout on lockdown today. No more visitations by members of the public.
Again, like in 2023, I must be extremely vague about my location. Given the tragedy last Sunday in Coeur d’Alene and events today (7/4) in the vicinity of the lookout, I think you will understand.
I opened up the lookout on July 1. Usually during the July 4 holiday week there are some ATV riders that come up the hell-rough road to the tower. But none came until today (a rather cool, cloudy day which turned to rain, drizzle, and fog). Shortly after noon two side-by-sides (RZRs) and a quad came up. A man and woman (50-ish) in each RZR, and a teenage boy on the quad. More about them later.
During the hour or so preceding their arrival in the vicinity of the lookout, there were about eight concussive explosions from places well below me and maybe within three miles. Not fireworks. I thought: C-4 or 82mm mortars, harkening back to my Vietnam days. But then four more explosions seemed to be getting closer, and coming from the general direction of the road leading up to the lookout. Then I saw the three ATVs .. then they stopped at the saddle between my peak and the next over. Then there was a much louder explosion from the direction of the ATVs.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the national forest below me, was sporadic gunfire of all descriptions. But that is the nature of July 4 in the woods in the wild west.
Not longer after that last explosion, I saw the ATVs start moving again. I knew that they would be on the peak, below my 30’ lookout, in about six minutes. I didn’t need to lockdown because I stay lock-downed.
I watched as they parked and shutdown the ATVs. One male RZR driver had on a red hat that said “I.C.E.” I shit you not. What kind of sadistic fucking joke was THAT? Or was it a joke? He had a handgun in a chest-carry. The other male RZR driver had a MAGA hat, but no visible weapons.
One of the women passengers got out of the ATV and walked towards the stairs to the tower. I then went out on the catwalk and greeted her .. pleasantly. She asked if they could come up and visit the lookout.
At that point, I got to use a concocted story that two other lookouts and I had discussed last night. “I am sorry, but recent tragic events in Coeur d’Alene have necessitated changes in security procedures at remote locations like this. I’m sure that you understand. The lookout is closed to all visitors and, beyond that I am not authorized to discuss any security arrangements.”
Yes, she said. (Gunfire in distance). Things like that, I said.
“AND PEOPLE ARE EVEN EXPLODING SEMTEX,” she says. Who the fuck said anything about Semtex? How did she extract that term out of what we had discussed so far? Semtex is not C-4, but it is similar. And Semtex is preferred by terrorists because it is hard to trace.
I’m fairly sure that this was all innocuous, including the fucking ICE hat. But maybe it wasn’t. All aspects of this event were documented and reported.
I’m not paranoid. But I am.
Bo Zarts
On 9/9/2024 I stopped in Amarillo to get week-old stitches out at an ER facility .. got the bill today: $20,000+
On Labor Day, 9/2/2024, I had busted my upper lip in a fall at the lookout tower in the Idaho wilderness. Went to the ER in a small town in the Idaho panhandle, where a moonlighting doc from Coeur d'Alene put eight sutures in my lip. When I told him that I'd be leaving to drive back home to SC on the 4th, he said to stop at an urgent care or ER anywhere along the route after about seven days to get the stitches out. The Idaho doc said that most facilities don't even charge to remove stitches.
So I planned my driving so that I could be at a urgent care facility in Amarillo, Texas, bright and early on Monday morning, 9/9/2024. I now know that what I thought was an urgent care facility was actually an ER associated with the medical center on the west side of Amarillo. It was within easy walking distance of the hotel where I spent that Sunday night.
The Amarillo ER doc asked me if the ER in ST. Maries, Idaho, had done a head CT scan. They had not. He ordered a CT scan, that was done right there in the ER facility. Results: NEGATIVE.
Then the Amarillo ER doc refused to remove the eight sutures because of encrusted blood in my mustache. He instructed me to soak it as I continued my drive, and to stop at an urgent care clinic somewhere down the road in a couple of days. The Amarillo ER had my Medicare and insurance info, and checked me out with no balance due.
So I stopped at an urgent care in Gainesville, Texas. They would not remove the sutures because they said it would require numbing, which they didn't do. Same with urgent care in Dennison, Texas. I did not get the sutures removed until I got to an ER in Monroe, Louisiana, on Wednesday, 9/11/24!
The nurses at St. Francis Hospital in Monroe absolutely could not believe that the doc in Amarillo would not remove the sutures. Or that two urgent care facilities wouldn't remove them. I had waited in the St. Francis ER no more than about ten minutes before getting called back to a nurses station, where it took a nurse all of about 60 seconds to remove the stitches .. without me feeling a thing. The charge by the St. Francis ER? ZERO!
So today, Monday April 28, a bill shows up in the mail from the Amarillo ER. The total for all services was over $20,000! Fortunately, Medicare and my insurance paid all but about $140 of it.
What a rip-off of the system! The doc in Amarillo ordered a head CT scan that I did not need (no symptoms, no pain, etc), and then would not remove the sutures!
BTW: The doc in St. Maries, Idaho, did not think .. based on his examination and my history .. that any CT or MR imaging was necessary. And Medicare and my insurance covered 100% of the ER visit in St. Maries.
"Democrats are here to remind us that life is unfair .."
"Republicans are here to make certain that it is."
Lewis Black
I think Donnie's time bell has rung .. hurry up, it's time.
(Apologies to TS Eliot and Dire Straights)
Fires along the Blue Ridge Escarpment on 3/26/2025 - NC/SC Boundries
One of these fires, the Persimmon Ridge fire (of the Table Rock Complex), has advanced to within 3300 feet of my cabin and the Bo Zarts Studio. I evacuated on Sunday, 3/23. A mandatory evacuation order was issued two days later, on Tuesday.
This coming Saturday may be another Red Flag day with high winds. But rain is forecast of Saturday night through Monday. I'm hoping the roads open up, at least briefly, after the rains. I would like to get in to rescue some hard drives and get eyes on the situation.
With the millions upon millions of tons of dead & down timber litter from last September's Hurricane Helene, and an ongoing severe drought, we will be looking at a real "fire season" here in the Blue Ridge mountains. Just as I've been warning of for almost two decades.
Bo
(Photo from WYFF-TV)
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