Tim McNulty served as lookout in Washington’s North Cascades during the fire season of 2003. These poems and journal entries evoke the wild beauty and solitude he experienced during his time among the peaks.  

Tim McNulty is a poet, essayist and nature writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry, In Blue Mountain Dusk (Broken Moon/Pleasure Boat Studio) and Pawtracks ( Copper Canyon ), and six chapbooks, including Last Year’s Poverty (Brooding Heron) and Reflected Light (Tangram). His award-winning books on nature include The Art of Nature, Washington’s Wild Rivers, Olympic National Park: A Natural History, Washington’s Mt. Rainier National Park and Grand Canyon: Window on the River of Time. Tim has received the Washington Governor’s Writers Award and the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives with his wife and daughter in the foothills for the Olympic Mountains .

Tropical Sunlight

Smoke from wildfires fills the valleys,
and a high veil of cirrus
dampens the morning sun.
Then a gift from Costa Rican forests,
Townsend's warbler, drops by.

Sunlit yellow face and breast,
dark Zorro-like mask,
quickly, neatly, shakes down
a subalpine fir crown
for bugs,
cleans his beak madly on a limb,
and takes leave south
across the Skagit,
heading back.

From the lookout steps,
three thousand miles north,
I'm warmed through.