US Shipping OnlyThe Sundance Fire happened in 1967, blazing over 56,000 acres in the Idaho Panhandle. On September 1st, a dozer operator and a sector boss were assigned to build line heading up a drainage on the eastern flank, where fire activity was expected to be minimal. Around 1300, however, the winds picked up. Forecasted at just twelve to eighteen miles per hour, actual readings reported gusts of thirty to fifty. The fire ran and blazed over the Selkirk Divide, down into the drainage where the two firefighters made an escape for their safety zone, located four miles away. In the end, the distance was too far, and the fire too fast. Both perished around 1600, overtaken by the flames.
"Everyone load up! We've got an order!"I look up from my phone and the notes I've scribbled down. The buggy is a far cry from Idaho and the Selkirk Divide - stuffy, a little dingy, clamoring with the sounds of seatbelts buckling and my last few crewmates rushing in from their bathroom breaks. I try to ground myself as the truck starts up and grumbles forward. Off to a new assignment. A new fire. The latest addition to a long and humbling history.
***
I've been obsessed with stories my whole life, in all their forms. When I was little, my dream was to be a fiction writer. Early as kindergarten, I'd steal all the paper from the printer at home and scribble words and pictures, stapling them together into tiny books. Elementary school, I switched to lined notebooks. Middle and high school, I begged my parents for a laptop and typed out my first few novels.
Most of my stories centered around the natural world. I loved animals and hiking and forests growing up. In a letter I wrote to my future self in seventh grade, it says, "My dream life after college would be to move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming so I could be a ranger at Yellowstone National Park and an author as well, but that is wishful thinking and I doubt it would ever work out."
I wish I could tell that kid the world works in mysterious ways. All these years later, I'm no national park ranger, and I'm no author (not really). But I get to work outside, and my life still revolves around stories. More and more, I'm starting to think it depends on them.
***
It's my second year in fire when I join a hotshot crew. I'm a perm, the only new hire starting in January, and it's hard to integrate with these guys that have known each other so long. Every day in the office, every truck ride to the worksite, they laugh and reminisce over days that absolutely sucked last summer or crewmembers of yore that they wish would return. Community, I realize, is not a matter of people in proximity, but more so people with a plotline - a group whose existence depends not only upon a mutual past, but the recurring narratives that keep it alive in the present day.
The seasonals arrive late in April, and with a complete crew, it doesn't take long for the trials of critical training to bring us close. It feels like no time that we're laughing about the mysterious smokejumper who joined us on a PT hike one day, or the night we went to the bar and gave each other insane haircuts per a longstanding crew tradition. When the going gets tough (and holy hell, does the going get tough) we'll bring those tales back. Maybe it's a reminder that things won't always be so hard - that someday, far away from our aches and pains, from MRE's and freezing nights, there will be something to laugh at again. Maybe it's a reminder of why we came here in the first place.
***
Other times, we don't laugh as much.
I'll never forget it, my first season of fire. At that point, I was still a bright-eyed rookie, eager and FFT2 as they come. I sneaked cool pictures of flames during holding (okay, still do) and ogled at the Sky Cranes dropping water every pass (that too) and thought this is it, man - firefighters are supposed to come home with amazing stories of action and adrenaline!
And when those stories come, how do you react? We're briefing one day in the Georgia Appalachians, set to do some simple prep work on a burn unit, and the overhead warn us not to get complacent. My assistant captain, a former hotshot herself, tells us of a time her crew went after a fire in California, thinking it was feasible to go direct. Instead, the fire blew up with the topography, heat intensifying and flames racing up a chute as easy as climbing a ladder. She shows us a video she took as they escaped in the buggies, all of it shaky and loud and green, suddenly overtaken by orange.
What I can't get out of my head, though - still can't, all this time later - is her voice and her hands. I'd never witnessed either of them shake like that before. They keep at it until the very end, when she puts her phone away, looks us in the eyes, and says,
"When we're out there, safety isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing."
As firefighters, we are committed to know and remember the Eighteen Watch-Out Situations, a list of scenarios which can, and have, led to disastrous results on the fireline. Number seven is huge: no communication link with crewmembers or supervisor. It asks us to imagine what we would do if our radios died, or how we would behave if we never got a morning briefing. But is that the only kind of communication link? What kind of danger do we put ourselves in when the stories stop being told - when the well of knowledge runs dry, when we forget the experiences of those before us?
***
I only know about the Sundance Fire because on a slow morning between assignments, our superintendent instructed the crew to research a more unknown tragedy incident. I sat in the buggy and pored over the reports from Idaho, scrawling down a summary of notes to be presented later on. I learned about the gusting, unexpected winds that pushed the fire, and the rugged escape route through which the two firefighters could not escape it.
Like I said, we were called to another fire shortly after. Put on night shift for almost a week, firing along a Ponderosa-ridden road in Arizona. Looking out into the green for hours on end, I went over our safety zones again and again in my head. When it was time to take and report the weather conditions every thirty minutes, I couldn't stop thinking, the wind, the wind, the wind. What is happening with the wind?
That bright-eyed rookie in me used to think firefighters are supposed to come home with amazing stories of action and adrenaline. More and more, though, I am coming to believe the relationship goes the opposite direction - that telling stories are a prerequisite for coming home at all. And so, among the many skills in my task-book, I am learning to do more talking and even more listening. I share tales to build community, to boost morale, to stay safe in an environment where everything is working against us.