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Zen Buddhism
A fire lookout is a forest worker stationed in remote areas at high elevation who looks for smoke in the surrounding forest, in order to proactively identify and help stop wildfires. In the novel’s closing chapters, Ray follows in Japhy’s footsteps by working as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascades.
Fire Lookout Quotes in The Dharma Bums
The The Dharma Bums quotes below are all either spoken by Fire Lookout or refer to Fire Lookout. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 33
Quotes
It was all mine, not another human pair of eyes in the world were looking at this immense cycloramic universe of matter. I had a tremendous sensation of its dreamlikeness which never left me all that summer and in fact grew and grew, especially when I stood on my head to circulate my blood, right on top of the mountain, using a burlap bag for a head mat, and then the mountains looked like little bubbles hanging in the void upsidedown. In fact I realized they were upsidedown and I was upsidedown! There was nothing here to hide the fact of gravity holding us all intact upsidedown against a surface globe of earth in infinite empty space. And suddenly I realized I was truly alone and had nothing to do but feed myself and rest and amuse myself, and nobody could criticize.
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Get the entire The Dharma Bums LitChart as a printable PDF.
Fire Lookout Term Timeline in The Dharma Bums
The timeline below shows where the term Fire Lookout appears in The Dharma Bums. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6
...tells Ray about growing up on a farm in Oregon and working as a fire lookout, skiing, and climbing mountains during his summers off from college. Afterward, Japhy explains, he started...
(full context)
Chapter 21
...with animals out in nature. He’ll stay here until March; he’ll work as a fire lookout in Washington in the summer, but he’ll visit Japhy in California first. His family spends...
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Chapter 24
...drawing of Crater Peak in the Cascades, where he used to work as a fire lookout and where Ray is going in a few months to do the same. Japhy remembers...
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Chapter 29
...an amphitheater and rest for awhile. Once again, Japhy starts talking about working as a lookout in the magnificent Cascades, which was like a religious experience. He pities everyone who’s still...
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Chapter 32
...hail are intolerable by the time they reach the top, where the tiny wooden fire lookout cabin is located. Ray realizes that it’s drearier than he expected, and he starts questioning...
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Inside the fire lookout cabin, everything is old and filthy. Wally tells Ray to start cleaning immediately, while Happy...
(full context)
