DABNEY TOMPKINS: You wake up and the sun is shining. There is nobody for miles and miles and miles around.
That’s pretty special.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: There is just this other-worldliness of being up high and above it all and kind of watching out
over the earth. It’s just, it’s very different. I never thought as an urban gay man that I could ever live out in an
extreme rural area like this.
ALAN COLLEY: We can’t even imagine living the way we used to live ever again. It would be so stifling.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: So let's go on up and take a tour.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: That wasn’t so good, was it?
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We have got… ALAN COLLEY: Keep going!
DABNEY TOMPKINS: 66 steps to go up.
ALAN COLLEY: And we have a name for every one of them.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: It’s 40ft up in the air to the top of the tower, but sometimes you have to stop and catch
your breath on the landing.
ALAN COLLEY: We are only halfway. DABNEY TOMPKINS: I know one more flight. One more flight.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We actually bought this land and built the lookout as a weekend getaway. We initially
would come up here for two days and then we would say, ‘Well that wasn’t really long enough. Next time we
go, let's go for three.’ And then four years ago, we looked at each other and we said, ‘You know what would it take,
I mean, what would it take for us to be able to live there full time?’
ALAN COLLEY: Before service built these things so they could look for fire. The technology has really replaced
many of the ones that used to be here. There were hundreds of them in the state of Oregon and now there
are maybe 40. He said, ‘Oh, this is cool! Let’s do one of those.’ Someday if we could ever find the land in a place
we really wanted to be and it all came together.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We are at the top of the stairs and just like in a forest service fire lookout, there is no
bathroom in this lookout. So when you don’t have a bathroom, you have to have lots of options. So we have..
ALAN COLLEY: Four potty options. DABNEY TOMPKINS: Yeah. So potty option number one
is the pit toilet out in the woods.
ALAN COLLEY: You can see the path, it goes into the woods.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: So then the second potty option is the pee funnel. Now we realise that that’s very boy
centric. So whenever we have female guests, we always give them a Gogirl and they can use it out here if they
want to. It’s kind of their souvenir of the Summit Prairie.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: All right. Come on around this way, let’s go inside.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We are urban, deep urban city guys. I was a residential real estate broker and we lived
in a very big house and we put on our starch shirt and tie, went to work in my Jaguar every day. Ate at very
expensive restaurants, went to really fun parties. It’s fun but it’s a little bit limiting.
ALAN COLLEY: We have been through a lot together. I mean really shifted; we’re growing old together.
We have been together for 23 years.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: You know he was in his 40s and I was in my 30s when we met and I am 60 now and he is 70.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: I don’t know what, what made us think we could do this?
ALAN COLLEY: I don’t know but you know, we stop, you know, what we stopped backpacking.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: So inside we have two beds downstairs. The lookout can sleep a total of four.
If it’s cold, like we live here full time in the winter time and many times it’s quite cold, we have a little propane
stove and light.
ALAN COLLEY: We have LED lights. It’s run by solar, it’s off-grid, so it’s not connected to the landline in any way.
We have a convenient of a cell tower for Verizon. So we have got access to the internet.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: There is a collection tank down there that collects the water and then there is a solar
powered pump, that pumps it up into a little pressure tank that’s up under the bed upstairs. But it actually feels
and operates just like regular city water. We have a little hot water heater so you have hot water so it’s very much
like if you lived in the city.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We have a propane stove and oven.
ALAN COLLEY: Just because you live off-grid doesn’t mean you have to have bad food. You would be surprised
how many really big meals we’ve done, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners here and huge spreads from just
that stove. So it’s kinda cool to have that capability right here.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: We also have a propane refrigerator that has a little freezer compartment in it.
So it’s very easy to keep food fresh here.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: So now we’ll take a tour of the upstairs.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: All right. Yup.
ALAN COLLEY: We live according to the rhythm of the land rather than to live it you know with the alarm clock.
ALAN COLLEY: Part of that is the fact that we are sort of retired from that kind of routine.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: You know waking up here in the morning when the sun first starts to shine in and I call it
surveying the kingdom you know, you just look out and you just see for miles and miles and miles and you hear
the birds singing early in the morning and you look out and the deer on the meadow.
ALAN COLLEY: That I, I will say this when the snow hits and we have a snow storm come through here, the snow
sticks on the windows. So you can't see out and it’s one of those things where, “Oh my god! We are in the middle
of a snow storm and look at all that stuff and we are cosy and also stuck here.”
DABNEY TOMPKINS: Yeah.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: You can just open the doors like we have now and it’s nice and you can sit out and enjoy the view outside.
ALAN COLLEY: It’s pretty great to be able to sit out here and watch the sunset and storms come.
ALAN COLLEY: The coolest part of all...
DABNEY TOMPKINS: Is the shower because on a really cold day when you come out here
ALAN COLLEY: When there is snow on the deck and yeah.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: and just take a shower, it is the best, it is my favourite.
ALAN COLLEY: And nobody can see you there is only forest service land around us so nobody’s here.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: Yeah.
ALAN COLLEY: We get to do this in front of God and everybody.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: Yeah.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: This is our vegetable garden. It’s early season so we don’t have a lot of stuff very mature
yet but we have radishes and we have some strawberries that have come back and...
ALAN COLLEY: And they are blooming DABNEY TOMPKINS: I can see that and there is Kale.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: This is our hot tub here. It’s actually heated by a wood stove that’s submerged inside
the hot tub and the water actually comes from our spring. It’s just gravity fed into the hot tub.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: The only three things you have to have for this hot tub are water, wood and a match.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: One of my favourite times to come in the hot tub is on a wintery snowy night where there is
snow just everywhere you have to kinda it’s really cold when you come down here and it’s freezing cold when
you take your clothes off and you jump in here and it’s so warm and after you have been in here for an hour then
when you get out it’s really cold but when you put your clothes on it’s..
ALAN COLLEY: Toasty. DABNEY TOMPKINS: It’s toasty warm. The hike all the
way back up to the lookout.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: I think my favourite thing is to just sit here and just be absolutely still and quiet and just be
really aware of the site and the sound and the smell of what’s going on around you.
DABNEY TOMPKINS: I don’t wanna say that it’s for everybody, but it’s worked very well for us I mean I
wouldn’t trade it, the experience, for anything. You know, someday we’ll have to move back to the city.
Someday we will not be able to go up and down four flights of stairs every single day, you know, several times.
Someday we’ll do that.
ALAN COLLEY: We wonder how often, how soon that’s going to be because there are days when it feels like,
'Oh my God'..
DABNEY TOMPKINS: But I will say this I will forever remember this experience and be grateful that I had it.
I don’t think I’ll ever look back on this and go, well, ‘Shoot what did we miss while we were out here in the woods?’
Not a thing. It’ll still be going on when we get back to the city.
ALAN COLLEY: It’s really, really pretty wonderful. I’m in love with this place.