Nels Bruseth was a stocky, broad shouldered man five feet ten inches tall. He was strong enough to hold a glacier but there is no mountain tall enough in the Cascades (or cache description) to symbolize his character.
Nels was a resident of Darrington Washington, his occupation for many years before his retirement in 1951 was that of a forest ranger, but in late years he painted landscapes, some of which are still on display inside the Darrington Ranger Station. He was an amateur photographer, geologist, botanist and guitarist. Nels also was a published author. His book Indian Stories and Legends of the Stillaguamish, Sauks and Allied Tribes documents the history, culture and legends of his beloved native neighbors. In 1916 Nels was the first lookout guard stationed on Mt. Pugh he lived in a tent. Without any kind of trail leading the dangerous top, he used a garden rake to claw his holds in the steep heather slope to reach the summit. When a lookout house was built in 1921, Nels felt that he had finally found a domicile in heaven because he had persuaded a woman to share it with him as wife.
He had met Beate while she was staying with an uncle near Camp Bedal for the summer. The obstacles to courtship seemed insurmountable, but the stubborn lookout found a way. After 5 o clock reporting time, he dashed madly down the top of Pugh Mountain, racing cross country toward Camp Bedal, to spend a few hours of courtship, then in a grueling climb back to the summit and his station so that he could arrive by 7:30 am to make his morning report. The round trip was about 20 miles with a drop from 7,200 feet to 1,200 feet. (Now THATS devotion!!!) When He walked through the forest roots and rocks seemed to erupt from the trail and grab his feet and ankles every time a bird or a butterfly flitted by.
Which also seemed to happen to his Model T as he was found himself in the ditch as we would be distracted scrutinizing birds and flowers. Their identification took precedence over the road in front of him. Nels knew the names of almost every scientific plant in his forest. Which came in handy as He often had times where he just had to get out and into the mountains by himself for a couple of days. Sometimes he even forgot to take food along, and he would have to eat what was available to him, roots, berries, or stunning a fish with a rock. It was said of him that "his complete absorption in nature transcended his bodily needs for any kind of nourishment, as if he absorbed manna from the dew, mosses and stream s."
Nels Bruseth had been selected as Darrington's man of the year in 1949 and a banquet had been given in his honor. 2 parks, one of them with hand dug canoes given by his native friends, and a 7,200 ft mountain located between Bench Lake, and Mt. Buckindy had been named for him.
In my own research of Nels, I happened to run into two old timers in Darrington. When I asked about him, the one nodded at the other and told me with a gleam in his eye that Nels was a man that every man looked up to. His legacy still lives on, half a century after his passing.