Firefighting

Stuck on a nostalgia trip. This was my first “real” fire. I say “real” because this fire had a real shot of getting out of hand and harming many of us. The fire jumped the line we spent all day building and spread across our only escape route, knocking it out. Once night fell, we were lost. It was blacker than black. All we had was the light of our headlamp and the experience of our crew boss. Every tree looked the same. The floor was covered in tree litter and the slope was steeper than hell. We hiked all night until finally we found the dozer line we carved out earlier in the day. The soft dirt felt amazing. We loaded into our vehicles and many of us, me included, crashed on the way back to camp. If I was a fire virgin before that day, I wasn’t anymore.

It made me love firefighting so much.

I’m writing something that made me go back and look through my old firefighting pictures. This was taken on the Liberty Fire from 2017. Over a million acres burned that year. I loved the long days and steep hikes, the crappy food and good company. I miss those days.

When I was a wildland firefighter, I loved spending weeks sleeping in my tent with nothing but the essentials. Since retiring, I’ve grown used to superfluity. My dilemma is figuring out if I have the strength to get rid of what I don’t need for a life spent on the road.