You’ll want to stay here at 6,521 feet, where jagged peaks and rounded humps of mountains jut into the sky in a circle around you as if the ocean’s waves have been turned to stone and transported high above the Mount Baker Wilderness.

You’ll want to sit in the small square room of the Winchester Fire Lookout, with windows all around it, daydreaming about the timelessness of these everlasting hills. You might think about staying overnight, if only for the chance to see the moon rise and break your heart with its beauty and to hear the wind buffeting the lookout.

Compared to these wonders, you’re not so big.

“It reminds me that we’re so small and there a lot bigger things in the world than our struggles and our pain,” says Terry Sacks, a 52-year-old Maple Falls resident.

Sacks made the trek to the lookout one sunny Saturday morning with hikers from the Bellingham-based Mount Baker Club, whose members saved it from being demolished back when the U.S. Forest Service had decided to tear down its lookouts because they had fallen into disrepair after no longer being used as firefighting tools.

Bellingham native Gary Haufle led the effort to restore the lookout, which was built in 1935 but was a sad hulk of its former self — sagging boards, broken windows, unpainted exterior — before club members set to work. They finished the project in 1982. Five years later, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Haufle died Nov. 17 of a heart attack. The hike was dedicated to his memory; a plaque will do the same in the future.

SCHOOLYARD TO THE HEAVENS

Club members meet at 8 a.m. at Sunnyland Elementary School in Bellingham to carpool up the Mount Baker Highway, then to Twin Lakes Road. It’s bumpy-going here, especially during the final two miles to the lakes.

Along the way there are forested byways and splashes of color from blooming wildflowers — the red of Indian paintbrush, the bright orange-yellow of Columbia lily, the sensual purple of lupine.

The road ends at Twin Lakes, which is the trailhead for the 2.1-mile hike up to Winchester Lookout, on Winchester Mountain.

On the trip are Sacks, Mel Monkelis, Tim Volwiler, B.J. Millan, Pete Chorney and Nick Timms, all Whatcom County residents except for Timms, who lives in White Rock, B.C.

“All the flowers are out,” Monkelis, 51, says on the hike up.

“I wonder what the common folk are doing back home,” jokes Chorney, a 61-year-old club board member who stops to take lots of pictures of the stunning scenery on the way up.

Above the hikers, the sky is a deep blue, with a fluffy white cloud sitting on top of snow-clad Mount Baker like whipped cream. Below the hikers, the Twin Lakes sparkle blue-green. The trail is clear of snow, except for a deep snow field that the group easily skirts on the way up.

Although it’s just a little over 2 miles up, the elevation gain is about 1,300 feet — making it steep in places. But it’s worth the effort, even for those who have been up there numerous times.

“It’s still inspiring like the first time. It’s a beautiful neighborhood. It has a coming-home kind of feeling,” says David Inscho, a 43-year-old Bellingham resident who’s been going to the lookout since 1997.

Inscho didn’t go on today’s hike but was up there May 31-June 3, when he and fiancée Kristine O’Kelly cleaned the lookout, including washing its 72 window panes.

REMEMBERING GARY

One last push up over a rocky part of the trails brings hikers up to a flat clearing on Winchester Mountain.

“That was his favorite place,” says Joan Sova, a Bellingham resident and Haufle’s widow. “That was the first hike he took me on.”

The scenery must have made quite an impression during that first hike 10 years ago, as it does today.

“Man, the peaks keep coming — everywhere you look,” says the 56-year-old Volwiler, a Bellingham resident who’s been busy hiking to train for an upcoming trek in Nepal.

The peaks include Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Mount Larrabee, American Border Peak and Tomyhoi Peak with Tomyhoi Lake below it.

The hikers take a break and eat some lunch inside the lookout as the wind starts to blow in cold gusts. “Oh, how fabulous,” Millan, 48, says while inside.

Inside the small white building a logbook signed by visitors show that Haufle’s family had hiked up the day before. Seattle resident Ken Haufle wrote about his father’s love of the wild places and of their shared memories of visiting Winchester:

“We’ve enjoyed many sunrises and sunsets here. At night we gazed into the heavens. Nowhere else have I seen the Milky Way so vivid. We’ve spent many quiet moments here together admiring the pure majesty of God’s creation as well as the little things such as birds soaring on the thermals and the tiny chipmunks scavenging for food. … When Gary was walking through the forest, crossing a meadow or at the top of a peak is when he was the most at peace.”

The Mount Baker Club hikers read these final words.

Then they return to the world below.