In the 1930s and 1940s (and probably later, too) the US Forest Service employed something like fire-watchers, men who would hike out on their own with little equipment into the forests to their station, which was a single fire lookout tower in the wilderness [1].

There they would sit on their own and scan the horizon for fires until their replacement arrived, usually after a few months. If they would see smoke, they had to walk (again, on their own) to the smoke and try to put out the fire with the little equipment they had.

If they couldn't put out the fire they had to go get help - quite an undertaking since the towers often were not connected to any telephone network.

Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, did exactly that to support his BSc in forestry from 1935 to 1938, always sitting alone in the forest, usually not seeing anyone for months at a time.

Source: Vietmeyer's 'Our Daily Bread, The Essential Norman Borlaug'

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lookout_tower