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I won’t be the first or the last to note how bittersweet it is to move on from a hotshot crew. Everyone who has done the work knows the extremes it takes you to and the many ways in which you’re changed in that process. For myself, crew time was perhaps the most impactful experience of my life.But it was humbling before it was inspiring.
Anyone who’s attempted something they weren’t quite physically prepared for will understand. That first month, I knew I would never choose to quit, but I can remember a few moments I thought I would be asked to leave. Those days when your tool is moving you more than you are moving your tool. Words alone fail to convey how it feels to be a liability rather than an asset to those around you. But when you daily choose to stick it out, getting stronger and less self-centered in the process, you are hit with the very obvious fact that you aren’t the only one suffering. Everyone is in some kind of pain, everyone is suffering. And yet we all stay. When your days no longer center on simply surviving, your eyes are opened to what I think of as the More.
I attended a Jesuit high school and there it was referenced in Latin as the “Magis,” the More. At that time, it was a religious concept of doing everything for the greater glory of God through acts of service for others. On the crew, it was similarly the idea that everything you do is for the people next to you. Every bit of swamp or dirt that you move lightens the load for the person behind you. And this competitive selflessness wasn’t explained to me, it was consistently demonstrated. How incredible and how rare is it to have that in a work environment?
Personally, I’ve never seen values like these displayed in another workplace.
It’s doing the More when you see someone carrying a 40lb pack and a 20lb saw push their struggling friend up a particularly steep grade. Or your squaddie order everyone to stay with the buggy and then run into black smoke to save someone’s trailer home with a garden hose. Or when a nearby crew is hit by a snag and your whole module hikes, then drops packs and runs half a mile uphill to form a human chain to carry the injured. Or in the quieter moments, when crewmembers and overhead rally around one of their own who’s struggling with darker thoughts, putting people above production.
This zealous selflessness is a cultural phenomenon I found specific to my time on a hotshot crew. And it’s no wonder why it’s hard to return to the “real world.” Those values are in many ways countercultural to the modern society we return to in the off-season. Hard work for its own sake. Deep connection to nature. Public service for low pay. Denial of material comforts. Sacrifice of body and health. Love of others before self. We simply don’t find these values in many of the places we go looking each November.
And that’s why it’s bittersweet. It’s beautiful that you had that once, and it’s a comfort knowing deep down that these are the people who will attend your wedding and your funeral. But it’s a bitter pill reflecting on how unlikely it is to find another job or a group of comrades quite like this elsewhere in the real world.