Don Allen was about to drive home from work when his phone began buzzing with messages. His screen filled with images of broken windows, shattered glass, and a bludgeoned door. There had been a break-in. But it wasn’t Don’s home. In fact, for Don, it was even worse.
It was a tiny, 95-year-old wooden structure perched atop a 5,685-foot pinnacle in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. For the past decade, on weekends and time off from his job as a manager of an electronics company that manufactures CO2 sensors, sixty-three-year-old Don Allen had been making the three-hour drive from his home in Portland to lead a volunteer effort to save the historic High Rock lookout.
Images of the destruction posted on social media sent shockwaves through the community leading the restoration effort, and across outdoor enthusiast groups that appreciate the site for its historic significance and unequaled view of Mount Rainier.
“I had people calling me that night and talking to me ‘til after midnight because they needed just to talk to somebody,” Don said. “A lot of people were really severely affected by this. They wanted to know what we were going to do about this. They needed reassurance.”…