“Do we have to stay on guard the entire weekend, or are we allowed to take breaks?” Donnie and I wanted to ask the ranger at the Tiller Ranger Station when we stopped in to inquire about the area. We’d rented the Pickett Butte Fire Lookout Tower, a 12×12 cabin on 40-foot stilts a few miles up the road in the midst of the Umpqua National Forest in Southwest Oregon, and we wanted to clarify our responsibilities as the tower’s weekend occupants.

When they’re not in use, the Forest Service in Washington and Oregon rents out about 70 houses and fire towers that the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the 1930s for the “smoke chasers” who patrolled the forests for fires. For $35 to $90 a night, campers interested in hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, horseback riding, fishing and hunting on the surrounding forest land have a small base to call home. (Friends and I stayed in another of these cabins, the Ditch Creek Guard Station, last winter. The story here.)

Built on a hilltop named for William T. Pickett, the homesteader who claimed it in 1898, the Pickett Butte Fire Lookout offers a single bed; a wall heater, stove, mini-fridge, and lanterns all powered by propane; and wall-to-wall windows providing expansive views of the Jackson Creek Drainage area and distant higher peaks. We used the rickety plastic egg-crate pulley to lug up the necessities (i.e. sleeping bags, warm clothes, coffee, boxed wine, and cheese) and settled in. Lucky for us rain-weary Portlanders, we enjoyed clear, sunny, 60-degree days, and T-shirts — in February!

 Donnie, acclimating to life on stilts. In his favorite shirt.

The cabin’s interior.

Our mapping tool, on a wooden stand in the center of the cabin, would have allowed us to pinpoint the exact location of any smoke we saw in the distance. We spent hours practicing just in case.

 The privy, while handy on special occasions, was extremely inconvenient for regular use, being four precarious flights of stairs below. Not to worry: we figured out a workable system.

Physics at work: we used water in the bottom of a translucent bottle to magnify a headlamp’s light and an upturned bowl to up the volume on the music. (Cush camping, admittedly.)

 Veggie egg cheese scrambles + french press coffee = the breakfast of champions

When you’re living up in the air (in an area without many hiking trails at least), the activities of the sky outside play a pretty central role in your life. The sunset colored the sky deep pinks and purples and cast a warm glow over everything in the cabin.

And when we woke up the next morning, the clouds that had rolled in overnight still filled the valleys below us.

A random pretty: a waterproof leaf in the gravel road leading up to the cabin.

On Day Two, we took a two-hour road trip to Crater Lake for some cross country skiing, entering a white winter setting that was a stark contrast to our sun-drenched paradise. From the south entrance, we headed clockwise along the snow-covered road that circles the lake, meandering off trail a few times across the meadows sloping down from the rim.

Donnie and Wizard Island, the cinder cone at the west end of the lake.

Mount McLoughlin in the distance

Cutting the cheese (more literally than usual).

Oh, just stretching. Or something.

The dining options near Crater Lake in winter are limited, but upon a recommendation we picked up on the road, we stopped on our way back to base camp at José’s Mexican Restaurant, an unassuming hole-in-the-wall spot six miles past the town of Prospect. The family-run establishment serves up fajitas and enchiladas made with fresh ingredients and scratch-made tortillas. Delicious. Because the place was empty and we didn’t want to feel lonely, we ate in the adjoining Gorge Lounge bar, where a group of mustachioed locals chatted with the bartender while drinking Budweiser and Coors and half watching an obstacle course TV show involving rotating foam arms and whipped cream. One of the men started sputtering and snorting in a dramatic fake coughing fit before realizing we were behind him eating. He apologized, saying he didn’t realize the place “had company.”

After lowering out stuff our of the fire lookout on Day Three to head back to Portland, we made another stop. I wasn’t aware before, but the Umpqua National Forest boasts an extremely impressive feature: the world’s largest sugar pine. We had to pay homage.

The 400-year-old tree, measured in February 2012 at 255 feet, towers over its companions. The base of this tree has a giant chainsaw-induced wound from its run-in with vandals in 2000. (Who DOES that?!)

Many adventures begin in The Dalles, the end-point of the main Oregon Trail, a small city on the banks of the Columbia 85 miles east of Portland. The wide open roads just outside of town, sparsely trafficked and surrounded by rolling farmland, make for some excellent cycling.

When it’s pouring in Portland, you can usually find sun in The Dalles.

While I’d used The Dalles (rhymes with “pals”) as a departure point many times, I’d never actually stopped to get to know the town. And so Donnie and I decided to visit without bikes in tow. Rather than clipping on our helmets and pedaling off as soon as we arrived, we lingered for an afternoon, wandering  up and down the streets, observing the details we never noticed when we were on our way somewhere else.

We discovered a working-class city struggling for a comeback from the long-ago collapse of the aluminum industry — and succeeding in quite a few instances. We encountered a thorough mix of elaborate and gritty: ornate, turn-of-the-century properties sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with plain, uninhabited storefronts with “for lease” signs in the windows; a fancy French bakery, a brewpub in the old brick courthouse building, and recently renovated Moorish-style theater down the street from an empty car dealership, a cheap steakhouse, and a shop selling bedazzled tangerine-colored prom dresses.

The city is certainly trying: an urban renewal agency has invested in the port district, a snazzy underpass that connects the city with the river (formerly separated by Interstate 84), and various buildings downtown, including an historic hotel, a flour mill, and a Masonic lodge. (In 2005, Google established a server farm in town as well, but not much as changed as a result, because the company keeps its operation top secret.)

Here are a few of the sights we came across during our ramble:

Sunshine Mill, a 130+-year-old wheat mill, which still contains the old flour milling equipment — and apparently now a wine bar, bocce ball court, and performance venue as well

A functioning-since-1905 blacksmithing shop, with a particularly cool sign.

No better recreation than bowling and prime rib. Amiright??

The ticket booth for the old, Moorish-style Granada Theater, which, built in 1929, was the first place west of the Mississippi to show movies with sound. It reopened in the last few years as a live performance venue. (Historic pics here.)

One of many vacant properties downtown seeking tenants. (You’d get jazzy windows!)

A back alley

A shadow and its fire escape.

Oh, you know: air conditioners!

Steaks, burgers, beer

Down by the river-side train tracks.

While I’m sure we’ll still frequently breeze through The Dalles on our way to the open road, we’re also likely to hang around longer after we return — for coffee, pastries, beer, or a quick round at the bowling alley.

Exciting news on the freelance front:

Last week, The New Yorker published my story, “An Old-School Book Scout,” about Wayne Pernu, a Portland book scout who makes his living buying books for cheap at yard, estate and library sales and reselling them at Powell’s Books. Relying on his knowledge and intuition (rather than a barcode scanner) and reselling almost exclusively to the brick-and-mortar establishment (rather than on eBay or Amazon.com), Pernu is a rarity in his profession, and one of the last of his kind.

Check it out! http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/03/the-book-whisperer.html

Five friends and I snowshoed through the dark to the Forest Service cabin in Oregon’s Umatilla National Forest, aware only of what fell within the narrow beams of our headlamps — snow, mostly, and the dark silhouettes of trees. It wasn’t until we woke up in the morning and stepped outside that we really knew what surrounded us: snow and trees, yes, but also a pole fence and horse corral, a meandering, half-frozen stream, and multiple pairs of fresh animal tracks — sometimes parallel, sometimes crossing — evidence of the nighttime dramas we’d missed.

The Ditch Creek Guard Station is one of about 70 houses and fire towers that the Civilian Conservation Corps built in Washington and Oregon in the 1930s for the “smoke chasers” who patrolled the forests for fires. The Forest Service now rents the structures out for $35 to $90 a night to campers interested in hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, horseback riding, fishing and hunting on the surrounding forest land.

Our cabin consisted of a kitchen stocked with pots and pans, a living room with a futon, table and chairs and a bedroom with two sets of sturdy bunk beds. While there were a propane-powered fridge, stove, and freestanding heater, the water was turned off for winter, so we scooped up a pot of snow from the yard and melted it on the stove whenever we got thirsty or wanted to flush the toilet (this happened once, at the end of our stay; we called it The Big Flush and all gathered ’round).

My friend James and three pots of melted snow

The Forest Service has excellent taste in art.

On Saturday, we snowshoed to Penland Lake, which, this time of year, is completely frozen over. Cyclones of snow periodically lifted up and spiraled over the lake before setting themselves down again.

On the way:

Jake, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever/Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever mix (introductions were never short), during one of the times he WASN’T wearing his fur-lined moccasins.

Lots of running happened

Also, lots of resting

The coolest cabin ever.

Me, Stasia, Laura

Ditch Creek flowing through its valley, south toward the north fork of the John Day River

Packing the Crystal Ballroom in Portland on Saturday, whiskery men pitted their facial hair one against another at the 2012 West Coast Beard and Mustache Championships. They competed in categories that included natural mustache, chops-style mustache, freestyle mustache, full natural beard and partial beard.

In honor of the competition, which the “Portlandia” blog covered here, I’ve talked with a few men across the country about the moustachioed way of life. Nashville web developer Michael Eades, creator of Moustache May, a month-long competition in which participants grow a ‘stache and post its picture to a website every day for a month, encourages everyone with the potential to grow a ‘stache to at least try. Not doing so, he says, “is like having a pair of wings and never bothering to try and fly.”

Here’s what Eades and a few other ‘stache wearers have to say about the upper lip accoutrement:

Name: Casey Paquet
Age: 33
Location: St. Petersburg, FL
Occupation: Director of Web Services for a private liberal arts college
Favorite kind of moustache: Handlebar, “because it seems to be a lost art.”
Most common reaction: “I am shocked at how many people want to touch it. A lot of folks actually swoop in to take hold of it without asking, which is rather awkward.”
Grooming regimen: “I am REALLY bad about grooming. I often say I wish I could find a moustache mentor — some old dude that could teach me the proper method of grooming.”
Why should someone grow a moustache: “For the most part, the gentleman wearing the non-ironic moustache displays an air of confidence, a willingness to take the risk that a bare chin and cookie duster poses.”

Name: Michael Eades
Age: 31
Location: Nashville, TN
Occupation: Web developer
Favorite kind of moustache: “The Handlebar ‘stache style is absolutely my favorite. There’s a regalness to it that no other `stache configuration seems to be able to embrace.”
Hardest food to eat: “Most food isn’t that hard to eat with a properly groomed ‘stache but occasionally a good beer will find its foamy way into the trouble zone.”
Grooming regimen: “I trim the ‘stache up every few weeks to keep it free of stray hairs and to keep its overall shape. I usually apply a tiny bit of wax to it each day as well, so give it the proper curl.”
Most common reaction: “I do occasionally get hollered at by at a group of drunken frat guys who tell me it’s a ‘bitchin’ moustache.’ I take this as a compliment.”

Name: Johnny Mayer
Age: 24
Location: Portland, Oregon
Employer: Rocco’s Bar Grill and Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade
Why he has a moustache: “I enjoy it. I have a good facial shape for it.”
Moustache realization: It’s not a cure-all. When I was 16 or 17, I worked at Safeway. Everyone in the produce department and upper management had a moustache. I thought if I grew one, I could advance up the ranks. But I later found out I didn’t work hard enough.”
Hardest food to eat: “Anything with sauce.”
Grooming regimen: “I trim it every once in a while when it gets scary. I don’t really take care of it. I wear it; it doesn’t wear me.”

Name: Adam Orcutt
Age: 37
Location: Northwest Indiana
Favorite kind of moustache: “I have always been inspired by the wild west, so I decided to grow a Hungarian/wild west style moustache. That is what I currently have and I think I am sticking with it for the long haul.”
What a ‘stache says about a person: “I think having a moustache tells the world the you have confidence and you take pride in how you look. I find most people that wear moustaches to be honest, outgoing, and usually up for most anything.”

Name: Jay Wiggins
Age: 39
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
The psychology of moustache wearing: “You begin with the moustache wearing you, and then you start wearing the moustache. There’s an acceptance that happens psychologically. There’s a point at which it becomes part of you.”
Most common reaction: “At baseball games and things like that, people always want to give me a high five. I enjoy that part of it.”
Hardest food to eat: “Pretty much all foods are annoying.”
Grooming regimen: “In the morning, I put a little bit of hair wax to curl it up and out. I’ll trim the lip portion.”
Why ‘staches are great: “There’s a whimsy and novelty about it.”

Name: Aaron Aninos
Age: 26
Location: Concord, North Carolina
Occupation: Graphic Design student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Why he enjoys having a moustache: “It keeps my upper lip warm during the winter, and it also serves as a
‘flavor savor’ when I’m drinking a nice frothy beer, preferably a Fat Tire.”
Hardest food to eat: “Anything with a thick and heavy sauce. Which sucks, because I’m half Italian.”
Why someone should grow a moustache: “I see growing a moustache to show that you have confidence in yourself and dedication, extraordinary managerial qualities, and in most cases you probably are a huge fan of Tom Selleck.”

The Q&A was compiled in 2010.