It was exactly like he'd said: wet, immense, timbered, mountainous, cold, exhilarating, challenging. And suddenly everything Japhy had ever told me about Seattle began to seep into me like cold rain, I could feel it and see it now, and not just think it. In the deepened dusk fog ahead the big red neons saying: PORT OF SEATTLE. I huddled against the bridgehouse hearing the Mark Twain talk of the skipper and the wheelman inside. It was miles and miles of unbelievable mountains grooking on all horizons in the wild broken clouds, Mount Olympus and Mount Baker, a giant orange sash in the gloom over the Pacific-ward skies that led I knew toward the Hokkaido Siberian desolations of the world. In The Dharma Bums he describes the journey this way: 'And suddenly I saw the Northwest was a great deal more than the little vision I had of it of Japhy in my mind. He hitchhiked from the San Francisco Bay Area through Seattle to the ranger station in Marblemount.

He managed a seasonal appointment as a fire lookout at the Mount Baker National Forest in Whatcom County for $230 a month. Inspired by a mountain-climbing trip in the Sierras with friends, Kerouac thought that a summer as a fire lookout away from people, drugs, and alcohol might help his writing.

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac is best known as Jack Kerouac and for his On The Road (1957), which in 1956 had yet to be published. His experiences in the Northwest and his journal entries will provide material for two novels: The Dharma Bums (1958) and Desolation Angels (1960). Kerouac hopes to use the solitude to write, but he will be disappointed. Forest Service fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the Mount Baker National Forest in Whatcom County. During the summer of 1956, author Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) spends 63 days as a U.S.

Jack kerouac some of the dharma