Reaching the black: Moon-scaped ash and juniper tree skeletons. Buggies parked, we unload, jumping out the back doors with our packs, grabbing tools and saws, the only moving things under the already hot blue sky. Bob stands next to his supe rig, leaning on his shovel watching us. —Today people.
All twenty of us line out in
marching order: Saw teams up front behind him and Paul and Nando, then us
scrapers. Bob turns and heads up the hill, and for an old guy he can hike. The
jokes and small talk end quick. Just breathing, creaking pack-straps, banging
fuel bottles, whispered cursing. Up through dry ash, kicking up a black cloud
behind us, dusting out the guys in back.
In twenty minutes we hit the
fire-line where the crew from yesterday stopped, at a patch of green junipers.
Bob sends Nando up the hill to scout while we pound water, sweating already.
Joseph, from the Hoopa Valley Rez back in California, turns and grins and
punches me in the arm, gorilla-like, almost knocking me over. —Singer! Ready to
dig line, rookie?
An air tanker roars over, low
and loud, old orange and white two-prop plane. Helicopter somewhere, rotors
echoing through the canyons.
Nando radios all clear. The
sawyers choke their chainsaws, starting them, letting them warm and purr,
putting in earplugs, wiping sunglasses, tightening leather gloves. CK goes first,
gunning it, making it scream, ten feet off the fire edge, cutting brush and
small trees at their bases, with Lucky Charms swamping, both smiling and
laughing, deranged forest gnomes. Schmitt and Buckner go next. Schmitt wearing
his weird alien sunglasses looking like a tall skinny Communion Visitor, Buckner leaving most of his brush for Roo and
George, though neither complains. Once they’ve moved enough ahead, Yoli tells
Joseph to start digging.
He lifts his pulaski and
swings, gouging a chunk of oak brush at the root, moving two steps and taking
another. I raise my pulaski and let it come down, taking a chunk of my own,
hitting and moving, hitting and moving. Cat behind me with her chingadera,
sometimes digging like us, sometimes just scraping off the dead oak leaves. She
and I have both cut line before, on Type II crews, but this, a Type I hotshot
crew, is faster, more efficient. Yoli, my squad boss, walks with us, keeping
everyone working and not talking too much. Ace, the other squadie and the only
black man on the fire, if not New Mexico, walks by on his way a good lookout
spot. —Asses and elbows people! That’s all I want to see!
The fire at first just smolders
in juniper needles, but the warming sun increases the wind, both of which feed
fire, forming dark columns of smoke. Hot-wood crackle, flames in gamble oak. A
ten-mile-square mountain bonfire. The helicopter passes over with its huge
orange bucket hanging from a cable, stray drops of water on the dirt and my
shoulders. It hovers over a hotspot up ahead by Nando and Bob, releasing 300
gallons on a torching tree.
Hard to pace myself, shoulders
aching, pack not fitting well but no time to adjust. Sweat dripping off my
nose. Joseph just a digging machine—grub, step, grub, step—but the rest of the
crew looking how I feel: Faces red, sweat-soaked hair.
The tanker flies over again,
this time with belly doors opening. Yoli yells, —Heads up!
A heavy wet red cloud pours
down. I duck, closing my eyes. Cool slimy liquid sprinkles my shoulders and
neck, rattling my hardhat. When I open my eyes, the ground glistens red. My
yellow nomex shirt covered. Cat looks the same way. She laughs. Joseph punches
me in the arm again. —Woo-hoo Singer! First tanker drop! Thanks for the beer!
Yoli yelling again from the
back of the line. —Come on! Back to work!
Most of the smoke from the main
fire actually rising to the north, though we pass hotspots, and stay along the
edge of the black. By noon, we work up to a high rocky ridge, Ace’s lookout
spot, and stop for lunch. Paul wants us to stay put, to see what the fire will
do during the hotter part of the day. I eat some veggie soy jerky, offering
some to Cat. She wrinkles her nose, but tries it, and nods. —Man, it’s actually
not bad. Thanks, Singer.
Bob calls Ace on the radio,
needing what he calls a gazelle squad: saw team and a couple scrapers, in shape
enough to get out quick if needed, for putting in a check line. Ace points at
Schmitt and Buckner, telling them to get going, and looks at me. —Singer?
You’re a good runner.
I stand and grab my pulaski.
—Sure.
He looks at Cat and jerks his
head. —Go ahead, marathon runner.
We follow the saw team down off
the ridge. Bob waiting at the side of a steep open bowl. —Alright, just check
line. If we stop the fire from burning through here we won’t have to cut line
uphill and around it later. Don’t worry, I’m your eyes. Let’s git’er done
quick!
He and the saw team bump ahead
to the thicker brush and Cat and I dig, taking more with only two of us, me the
first half foot and Cat taking the other. I yell back, —You good with this
pace?!
She nods, not looking up. —Hell
yeah, man!
We catch up to Schmidt standing
knee-deep in cut piñon branches, yelling at Buckner. —Swamp that shit!
Bob standing watching. Paul
radioes about winds picking up, that we might want to come back. Smoke blowing
up below us, getting darker. I look at Cat and raise my eyebrows.
Bob turns to us. —You heard
him. Head on back. I’ll stay down here.
Everyone else still kicking
back at the ridge. A type II crew has come in, bunched up behind us in our
safety zone. The wind stronger, Paul having to cup a hand over his radio.
—Bobby, you’d better come up, the winds are getting squirrely!
—Doesn’t seem so bad down here.
—Well, it is up here!
A huge gust comes in and trees
below the ridge torch, flames fifty feet high. The type IIs nervous, looking at
us crazy hotshots sitting around joking. Ace glances at them, then me, smiling,
slowly pulling out a cigar from his front pocket and lighting it, puffing
softly, letting the smoke drift over. Joseph gets out a can of chew, taking a
huge gob and putting it behind his lower lip. —Don’t know nothing, do they Ace
of Spades?
—Hell no, Injun Joe. Fucking
deucers.
Joseph punches me in the arm
again. Basically every time he talks to me he punches me in the arm. —Used to
be you, huh Singer?
I nod and shrug. —Yeah, I
guess.
—Not no more though, huh? This
ain’t no trail crew. I wasn’t so sure about you with that long hair and shit,
but you work hard.
I smile. —Gee, thanks.
—For a hippie.
—I’m not a hippie! I hate the
Grateful Dead. I’m a metalhead.
He punches me again and laughs.
—Fucking Metallica and all that shit, huh?
Smoke now pouring over us. And
heat. Trees torching twenty feet away, but the flames can’t cross our rocky
clearing. Thin smoky fire-whirls in the sky. The type IIs retreat back down the
line, saying nothing, and then, just like that, the fire surge ends, the smoke
vanishing and flames dying down. Paul tells us to get ready to get back to
work.
Cat and I lean on our tools,
waiting, looking out on the valley to Taos way way down below, talking about
how people there probably couldn’t even imagine what we were doing. I couldn’t
have before last year when I’d started fighting fires. She takes a drink of
water, her face covered in dirt and ash. —It is cool being on a hotshot crew instead of a deucer crew. I like
being in the action, man.
Paul looks down off the ridge
for Bob, worried, but Bob’s voice comes over the radios. —Where are you guys?
Let’s get moving!
We line out. Ace hikes by Cat
and me, smiling. —Goddamn my rookies, you’re starting to look like hotshots!
Our check-line held. The saws
start back up and we cut and dig for hours. My arms and shoulders and back
almost numb, but I don’t complain. No one does, and we tie into a rock cliff by
the end of the day.
Then the long hike back out,
but with the setting sun turning the valley pink and orange and purple below.
Being tired and covered in sweat and dirt making the view that much better.
Back to our buggies, 13-1 and
13-2, SNAKE MOUNTAIN HOTSHOTS in big black letters on the sides. We hang out
and sharpen tools and saws, milking another hour of overtime. I doze on the
drive back down, even with all the bumps. Back at fire camp, exhausted, we pile
off the buggies and line up for dinner along with all the other hotshot crews,
Type IIs, and engine crews. Because we’re hotshots, we ignore everyone else but
other hotshots, checking out who looks the filthiest, meaning who worked the
hardest, though of course the guys check out the women, which seems to amuse
Cat.
Bird and potatoes for dinner,
which I pass on, opting for the meager vegematarian “salad bar,” lettuce and
some cherry tomatoes, though there are rolls. As hotshots, we eat quick—even
though we are now off the clock, there are still chores to do: Cases of water
and Gatorade to get. Saw parts, medical supplies (sunscreen, lip balm,
bandaids). Cat and I are in charge of filling the five-gallon water jugs for
each of our buggies.
After, I wander, checking
everything out: Pickup trucks and green Forest Service engines everywhere.
Hotshot buggies. Even two horses tied to a trailer. Diesel fumes. Showers on
the back of a semi. Clustered single-person pop-up tents, big khaki-brown
canvas caterer tents. Old green army tents for medics, human resources,
Incident Command personnel, with light shining out of open flaps and
light-green glow-sticks hanging outside entrances. Laughter, shouting, joking.
A carnival. The Forest Circus.
Hoping to run into her, in love
with her since that first day of work back in California when she pulled into
the parking lot in her old blue Toyota pickup, getting out with her black hair
pulled back in a pony tail. Faded jeans, black t-shirt, catwoman sunglasses and
a barbed wire tattoo around her left bicep. Most of us were already gathered up
outside the office. Ace smiled and said, —You look like you’re from Chicago!
And she raised her right hand
in a fist. —That’s right, man! Got a problem with that?!
I find her at the information
board, showered and reading a local newspaper article about the fire. She
smiles. —Hey Singer, I was hoping I’d see you.
I somehow summon the courage to
ask if she’d like to take a walk. She hesitates, but then says sure.
Off the main dirt road leading
into fire camp we find a two-track going south into piñons and a field of sage,
and lose the camp lights and noise, except the humming generators. Sky clear,
millions of stars, the Milky Way actually milky-looking. She closes her eyes
and takes a deep breath. —Man, it’s beautiful here. I love the smell of sage.
—I almost can’t believe they
pay us for this job.
She laughs. —Really?
—I said almost.
I ask about being one of two
women on a hotshot crew. She tilts her head, grimacing. —It’s like being a girl
on a boyscout camping trip. I don’t think Bob likes women though, on his crew
or otherwise.
—He doesn’t seem to like anybody.
She laughs again and breaks off
a piece of sage, holding it to her face. —Man, I don’t know why you’d want to be on a hotshot crew. But
I’m glad you are.
—Thanks, I guess. What’s that
supposed to mean?
—I don’t know, man. A
vegetarian philosophy major?
—This coming from the Spanish
major.
—Ok, bueno.
She looks at the sky and I look
at her looking at the sky. I step toward her. She turns. I put my hands on her
hips and kiss her. She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses back. —Wow man,
you move fast.
—Is that ok?
—I’m just stating a fact.
I slip my hands under her
t-shirt, touching skin. Her stomach, her back. No bra.
She steps back and puts her
hands on my chest. —We should go back.
We sneak back into camp,
splitting up before we get to the crew sleeping area so, she says, people won’t
say anything, though she gives a quick wave before heading for our tents, where
later I lie wondering about how there now is something that could be said.
Growing up in
Michigan, I didn’t even know wildland firefighting existed. A firefighter was one of those guys in the big red engines
in town. I was only vaguely aware of things like National Parks like
Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, though couldn’t have even told you that
Michigan had some. Nor did I know the difference between a National Park and a
National Forest, though Michigan has both. I couldn’t have even told you the
difference between a National Forest and a State Forest, or a county park even.
To a city mouse like me, parks were parks, woods were woods, forests were
forests. In lower mid-Michigan, down in the Rust Belt, the most outdoorsy thing
I ever did was take walks out in what even then I didn’t know was state
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) woods outside of Ann Arbor, and camping
was what you did in one of those crowded campgrounds by a lake somewhere for
the Fourth of July.
Not that I never
got out of a fifty mile square area like most Americans: my mother’s parents
lived down in Phoenix, so we’d visit them for holidays, and once we even did go
to the Grand Canyon. And it’s not that I was a shut-in, watching tv in my house
all the time. I was on the Pioneer High School varsity soccer team, and in
college at Eastern Michigan University I discovered running, for fun. Some of
my friends and I would take long walks on the trails around the Huron River.
But I just never went camping or anything, and never even went up to Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula. When I got to college, I heard about people doing that, but
that was for all the Forestry and Biology majors. I was just an philosophy
major, I just read books, mostly, though from high school on, my main focus was
music, playing guitar in various and sundry bands, so that my weekends were
more about gigs at The Blind Pig or the Heidelburg. Or, if I wasn’t playing, I
was probably there checking out other bands until, finally, the last band broke
up in my senior year, and I—gasp—found myself approaching graduation. Suddenly
I had to think, what exactly does one do with an philosophy degree? Stay in Ann
Arbor and continue playing to indifferent crowds of fifteen to twenty drunk
college students? And become one of those older guys I’d see still in the music
scene, trying to ‘make it’ while making sandwiches at Zingermann’s? No, I was
tired of Ann Arbor anyways, perhaps related to my breakup with my last
girlfriend, who had ended up sleeping with not one, but two, members of a rival
band.
Meanwhile, since I
had taken so long to get through college, the friends I’d had were already
gone, scattered across the country. This came both from Michigan’s economic
outlook—there were, and are, simply no jobs in Michigan for college grads— but
also, from all of us looking for something different, somewhere where we could
fit in, culturally, creatively. One writer friend decided to try getting into
publishing in New York. Another wanted to try acting in Los Angeles. Another
went to San Francisco because that’s where the Beats hung out and because he
was gay.
And I certainly
wasn’t going to stay with my parents. My dad was re-married with a whole other
family by then. My mom had sold our old house and moved into a condo. We were
never the most affectionate family anyways.
Time to go. Time
to leave. Time to do something different. But what?
I went into
Eastern’s Student Services office my last semester, the first time I’d actually
even been there, and seeing all these people my age, my classmates, dressed in
suits, the guys with short hair and ties, interviewing with companies like 3M
and General Electric. That was Hell. I walked out.
I wasn’t so sure I
wanted the big city life. I wasn’t so sure about anything though, except that I
should do what my literary heroes did: Melville, Hemingway, Kerouac, they all
went off and had adventures, so I would too. When I graduated in December 1993,
with money I got from selling my amps and most of my guitars, plus some
graduation present money from relatives, the only thing I could think of was to
go hike down into the Grand Canyon. I figured it was Arizona, the desert, it
would at least be warm.
Well, when I
finally got there, in February, with a new backpack and everything, there was a
foot of snow at the South Rim. But, with the help of the backcountry rangers, I
did eventually get down into that huge space, even bigger and more amazing than
I remembered. This all a whole story in itself, but my life changed by just
happening to meet a guy, just on the trail, right by the Colorado River, who
worked as a wildland firefighter for the Park in the Summer. He was hiking for
fun at the time, but we got to talking and he told me about his job, going to
fires in the woods and digging in dirt, and I was like, You get paid for that?
He helped me get a
job first as a volunteer at the South Rim, which led to a summer job on a trail
crew. And my supervisor there was cool enough to let me go to the basic fire
training classes so I could get my ‘red card,’ qualifying me to go on fires as a
supplementary firefighter for the Park, if needed. Well, 1996 was a big fire
year, and that summer there were fires all over Arizona, and all over the
country. Our trail crew helped out on one down in the Kaibab National Forest,
just south of the Park. And, I’d never seen anything like it: probably about
four or five acres (though back then I didn’t yet think in acres) in the
ponderosa forest, with blackened earth and ash, and actual real flames. Not big,
nor moving fast, but at the time it seemed like the most dangerous thing I’d
ever seen. This was late afternoon, and the fire was already dying down. A Park
engine and Forest engine had already dug line around the fire. Again, not the
big red city engines—these were four-wheel drive flatbed pickup trucks, Park
white and Forest green, with pumps and 300 hundred gallon tanks of water. Us
trail dogs helped mop-up—digging up any hot or smoking areas, putting dirt on
them, or water if available, sometimes just scraping around with gloved hands.
We stayed on into the night, digging in that orange glow in the trees, embers
glowing like eyes, sparks drifting up into the sky. And again I was like, you
get paid for this?
With such a busy
fire season, resources were needed all over the country, and the Park and the
Kaibab would put together joint twenty-person hand crews to travel to other
parts of Arizona, or even out of state. One crew I was on went down to Sedona
for a big fire on the Mogollon Rim, and then towards the end of the summer
another crew went up to Yellowstone National Park, where I got my first of many
helicopter rides.
These hand crews I
was on were the Type II crews. The Type I crews were the Hotshots, the
elites—crews that worked together all summer long, and traveled all over the
West. Wherever the big fires were, that’s where they went. They were way more
in-shape, and more capable of handling rugged and dangerous situations, when
fires were in steep terrain. Once the hotshots got a fire under control, they’d
leave for the next fire and we would come in for mop-up. In bigger Fire Camps
on bigger fires, you could just tell: the hotshots knew what they were doing,
had their shit together, all wore the same t-shirt uniforms, and went to parts
of fires with the most activity and danger.
Plus, the women.
Once I got out west, I’d been seeing women that were outdoorsy and in shape,
which I’d discovered was really attractive. But the women on hotshot crews?
Awesome. There weren’t a lot of them, one or two every crew, and some hotshot
crews didn’t have any, but the ones that were there seemed just mostly badass.
My childhood fantasy come true, women right out of comic books, like Wonder
Woman, Elektra or Red Sonja, strong and confident, and wearing knee-high
leather boots.
That was what I wanted to do. So, after
that summer, I found a Wilderness ranger job down in the Superstition Mountains
for the Winter, and applied to all the hotshot crews in the Southwest and
California. Mostly hotshots hire from engine crews, but I didn’t even think
about doing that first: I’d seen the hierarchy, and ‘engine slugs’ were way
below hotshots. But, since I’d only been a lowly trail dog and Type II loser, I
didn’t hear anything, and thought I’d end up going back to the Grand Canyon,
until the Snake Mountain Hotshots called in mid-April. It was Nando. —Hey Dan.
You still interested in being a hotshot?
Hell yes.
The next morning we’re assigned
to the same area. The fire burned up to our line, but held. We work the edge,
mopping twenty feet in. No water except helicopter buckets, which Bob only uses
on heavier hotspots. So, just us, our tools, and dirt. The hotshot motto: Dirt
is my friend. With burning stumps, I scrape off the hot black parts using the
grubbing blade of my pulaski, and the axe blade to cut out roots, and Joseph
has already taught me how to throw on dirt, smothering it, cutting off the
oxygen.
While we work, Yoli stands on a
hill watching. —Singer! Don’t work by yourself!
I want to like Yoli. From the
Navaho Nation in Arizona, she's part of a program that fast-tracks minorities
up in leadership positions in Fire, which kind of automatically counts against
anyone, especially a woman, and though she’s no worse than some other Fire
people I’ve worked for, she’s not necessarily better, and seems to over
compensate for people’s opinion about her by being a little micro-manage-y. So
far in the season she seems to like me, I think because I don’t have a problem
with working for a woman, unlike some of our coworkers. And, I secretly think
she’s attractive. Not conventionally, she's kind of thicker, but it’s muscle,
and she can out-hike most of us, plus fit and tough and willing to get dirty.
The other guys claim to not really like women like her, or Cat even, and talk
shit about her all the time, but I suspect that involves their thinking Yoli is
kind of attractive too. But, yeah, she can be a little grating sometimes.
I look up at her, pushing back
my hardhat. —Yoli, it’s not that big of a stump. I’m almost done with it.
—Well, have Tony help you.
—Alright...
Tony the big goonie ‘third year
rookie,’ usually with a wad of chew in his lower lip. —Hey Singer so how you
liking fire-fighting? Not too bad huh? But I bet it got a little scary down in
that hole, huh? But that’s why we’re hotshots, we do shit like that. But we
also do shit like this. Here, let me get in there on that stump hole. You got
to use the dirt. Yesiree, dirt is a hotshot’s best friend.
I just stand back leaning on my
pulaski. —I think you got it Tony.
Yoli yells again. —Singer! You
guys are supposed to be working! Less talk, more work!
I cup my hands and yell up to
her. —We’re done!
—Ok! Well find something else!
—Copy! Tony, I’m going to try
over here.
Tony leans on his shovel,
spitting and smiling. —Alright well nice working with you. Maybe see you later.
See you on the next stump hole! Man there was this one time I stepped in a
stump hole and fell in up to my thigh. No shit, all ash, I could’ve broken my
leg and that would’ve sucked I tell you...
I go downhill, away from Yoli,
and find Teddie and Sasquatch working on a log. Teddie winks, smiling. —Tony
scared you away, huh?
—Does he always talk like that?
—Yep. Going on three years
nonstop.
Sasquatch nods. — The only time
he ever shut up was last season when he asked me to dare him to put a whole can
of Copenhagen in his mouth. This is when we’re going to Winnemucca in the
buggies. So I dare him and he does it, of course, laughing the whole time,
stuffing chew up inside both lips. He looked like a gorilla. Then he stopped
laughing and his face turned green. Then he grabbed a garbage bag and puked his
guts out.
—Great.
—Thing is, the puke was red.
—Thanks Sasquatch.
—It’s just, I couldn’t
understand if it was the Copenhagen that made it red or—
—Ok Sasquatch.
—Well at least he’s not in our
buggy.
—Hey you guuuyyyys!
Yoli just a small speck on her
hill, but we hear her clearly. Sasquatch turns around and shakes his shovel.
—What Yoli?!
—Less talk, more work!
—Fuck you Yoli! Fuck you and
your mother and your mother’s sister!
—Sasquaaaaatch! Stop fucking
around!
—It’s Singer’s fault! He won’t
stop talking!
—Singerrrrrr! Get to work! Go
find someone else! Work in pairs!
Teddie shakes his head,
laughing. —See ya Singer.
—Yeah hippie dude, later!
—You fuckers. And I’m not a
hippie.
—Well go listen to your Ozzy
Ozbourne somewhere else, we’re trying to work.
—Ok ok...
I pass CK and Lucky Charms
hiding under a juniper. They smile and wave and CK says, —Doing a fine job
Singer, a fine job.
Lucky Charms nods, —Yeah, call
us if you need something cut.
—Unless it’s got a lot of dirt
on it, then call Schmitt.
—But you’re doing a fine job.
On to Mountain Du, another
rookie, a small Hmong, digging in some smoldering needles under a juniper. —Hey
guy! I got fire here!
—Need some help?
—No man! I got it!
I look around. —Well, Yoli said
we should work in pairs.
—Ok man! You work this side and
I work this side!
—Alright...
And so on. By the end of the
day I work my way down to Cat, far away from Yoli or any of our fearless
leaders. Our section of line has basically died down anyway, and when I find
her she’s sitting behind a boulder writing in a notebook.
—Hey, mind if I pull up a seat?
She folds up her notebook.
—Sure man. I was just scribbling.
I find a flat rock to sit on.
—Diary?
—Poetry. Just trying to get my
thoughts down.
—What kind of thoughts?
—Oh man, life. Fire. What it’s
like. It’s hard to describe with words.
—And a picture doesn’t do it
justice either.
—Singerrrr!
Jesus. I turn and there’s Yoli
up on a clump of boulders in the black. I can’t escape her. —What Yoli!?
—We’re leaving! Come on!
On the hike out there’s more
joking and talking shit than yesterday, until Buckner points to movement in a
bush in the green. —A grouse!
The line stops and almost all
of the guys, even Ace, pick up stones, throwing them. A second grouse flaps out
of the brush, the two birds half-run, half-fly. Mountain Du actually hits one.
It flutters and crashes into the brush, disappearing, and the guys cheer.
Cat leans over to me,
whispering. —Is this normal, man?
I shake my head slightly. —It’s
like a Three Stooges episode.
Once we’re hiking again, Tony
yells up to me from the back of the line. —Hey Singer if we caught a grouse
would you eat it? Like in the wild? Do you eat fish? My grandma never ate fish.
Especially catfish—
Sasquatch turns around. —Tony
shut uuuuup! I’m sick of you already!
—Alright Sasquatch. Hey
remember last year when that bear—
—Tony I’m going to come back
there and rip your balls off and stuff them down your throat if you don’t shut
the fuck up right now!
The fire just kind of fizzles
out due lack of winds. We do a few more mop-up shifts then get de-mobed and
sent down to Albuquerque to stage and do project work for the Santa Fe National
Forest, staying in a hotel right off of I-40. I get paired up with Lopez, a
thick guy, still with a crewcut from his army days, his clothes and toiletries
neat and orderly in his red bag, compared to mine stuffed in a big pile.
I shower first, leaving it open
on the bed, so when I get out, he points to my copy of The Nietzsche Reader sitting on top. —You into that philosophy
shit? Cool, you’ll be a good influence. You’ve got to tell me about some of
that non-violence shit. Sometimes I just lose it, like when a guy’s looking at
my bitch. She’s a good influence too. I love her.
—You can borrow it after I’m
done.
—Cool.
The hotel next to a Target,
where most of the crew ends up, buying things they forgot or realize they need
before we left California. After being out in the woods for days I’m in shock
coming in a huge store filled with colors and clean things. I suddenly want to buy
something, anything, and find a portable CD player with a big pair of
headphones to cover my ears and shut out the world on the buggy or in fire camp
at night when everyone is still talking and snoring and farting. It’ll be the
most practical thing I buy that summer. Meanwhile I go half-mad passing the
women’s underwear section, wanting to rub my face in all the soft clean
panties. Yoli and Cat are actually in the men's section getting boxer briefs—essential
since with all the hiking we do, our nomex pants tend to rub the wrong way on
our thighs. Sounds funny, but it’s not. Still, the idea of them in boxer briefs
is kinda hot.
The next day we stick-stack for
the local district, clearing out small trees and underbrush near houses
bordering the Forest, in order to reduce the fire hazard, throwing all brush in
piles to be burned at the end of the season. Sawyers go through cutting while
the rest of us stack them in piles. We wear ear-plugs because of the chainsaws,
I can hear my heart pumping and my breathing with every thunky step. Carrying branches
over to a pile, throwing them on, walking back for another armful. Repeat. All
day.
The sawyers and swampers are
saw-hogs and only trade off cutting with each other, but fortunately the
district has some extra saws, so Bob has Ace give us rookies some saw training.
We’ve had the S-212 Intro To Chainsaws
class back at our Forest, I’ve already gotten to handle them a little, but
being out in the field with a bunch of other young men and chainsaws is both
exciting and a little terrifying. Some of the guys on the crews grew up with
them but to me, a chainsaw is something you perform massacres in Texas with, or
something Tina Turner would have you use in the Thunderdome. And believe me,
for Tina Turner, I would.
But the spinning chains, the
teeth, the growl, the killing of trees. There is a special place in Tree Hell
for hotshots, and I’ll be there. At the top rung maybe, but I’ll be there. But
yes, a rush, and addictive, even though all we’re doing is cutting up brush and
little baby reprod trees. A lot better than swamping, that’s for sure. And a
workout too—after one full tank I’m drenched in sweat, my nomex soaked. Carrying
and lifting twenty-five pound for a half-hour: No wonder all the sawyers have
biceps as big as they trees they’re cutting. And we’re not even on a fire: I
can’t imagine doing this with the pressure of having to keep up with other
teams on a fire line. Plus, like, trees going up in flames nearby.
Secretly—I'm not even sure Bob
and the foremen know—one at a time, Ace takes us out into another section of
the woods so the district people wouldn’t see us cutting any trees down. After
lunch I get my turn. He hands me the chainsaw. —Start her up.
I choke it once because it’s
been sitting for while, like I’ve been taught, and it coughs. Taking the choke
off, left hand gripping the handle, trigger guard between my thighs, I pull the
cord, and it growls alive. I let it idle while Ace points to a small tree.
—Take that one down! Now remember, think of your saw like a penis: You always
got to know where the tip is! Don’t just look at this side of the tree, look or
else get a feel for what your saw is going on the other side of the tree!
I try to hold the saw sideways,
bar parallel to the ground, not as easy as it looks, until Ace has to show me
how to just let it just hang from my left hand, where it balances perfectly.
Pulling the trigger, the chain spins, cutting, pulling itself into the wood. I
try for a third of the way in, but over-cut to about half. Pulling the bar out,
I lift the saw, turning it forty-five degrees, and go in diagonally for the
‘pie cut.’ The pie chunk falls away and I back up to check my work. And...it’s a
huge crooked gap.
Thankfully Ace doesn’t
laugh.—Alright for a rookie! Go ahead and do the back cut!
I turn the saw over, putting it
on the other side of the tree, lining the bar about an inch higher than the
face cut. Ace yells, —Falling!
The bar cuts in, and I look up:
the tree top moves. Ace taps me on the shoulder, signaling me to step away. I
do, and the tree falls and hits with a crack and a boom, the butt end popping
up in front of us.
He motions me to turn off the
saw. —See that? That’s why we back up. If you stayed there it could’ve come up
and broken your jaw. Let's do some stump analysis.
We walk over and look at my
stump: The back cut off-angles from the face cut and I slice through my holding
wood on the right side, causing the tree to pull to the left. And the back cut is
low, almost lower than the face cut. So shit. Ace smiles though. —Like I said,
not bad for a rookie. You got the tree on the ground and nobody got hurt.
When I get back to the crew,
Cat is smiling. —Well? How does it feel to kill an innocent tree, man?
—Primal. Very primal. So, how
about you? Did you like thinking you had a penis?
She laughs. —Ace had me imagine
it was a huge strap-on. It was cool, man. He said I was a natural.
We stick-stack for days, every
night coming back and re-checking into the same hotel. Bob would prefer us
sleeping in the woods, to toughen us up, and he hates wasting taxpayer money,
but tells us that’s the way the government works: use up your fire budget every
year or else the bean counters in Washington will think you don’t need it.
Though maybe someone, somewhere, is trying to be good to us, keeping us clean
and rested while away from home for so long. I actually agree with Bob, not
because of money, but because I sleep better outside. In the woods I can go off
by myself and sleep when I want, breathing cool night air and looking at the
stars, whereas sharing a hotel room with another person means, as with Lopez,
that they probably like to watch tv all night, and snore. Plus I can’t
masturbate.
Whenever one of us
rookies does something wrong, the vets have always yelled, ‘Thanks for the
beer!’ but never explained what it means, until Ace and Yoli finally sit us
down in the woods one morning when Paul, Nando and Bob aren’t around. The
‘couth system’ started way back with the first Snake Mountain Hotshots, when
someone was ‘fined’ for doing something ‘un-couth,’ like wearing their hat in a
restaurant, or not tucking in their shirt, but which eventually grew to include
someone fucking up, forgetting their gear, leaving vehicle lights on, being
late for work, et cetera.
Eventually—because why not, hazing is fun—it also came to include
‘rookie-firsts’ fines, like first helicopter ride or first time in another
state. The idea being to penalize not by paying money, which of course would be
illegal, but by buying beer for the end-of-the season party. So the ‘fines’
come in six-pack increments, about five dollars per sixpack, with the ‘Couth
Master’ (this summer, Roo) keeping track in a little notebook.
After explaining
this, Ace smiles and spreads his hands. —It’s just a way we hotshots have of
keeping each other in line.
Yoli nods. —And
it’s tradition.
Ace looks around
expectantly. —So, are you all in?
The other rookies,
Mountain Du, Otter and George, all nod. Cat and I both sit with our arms
crossed around our knees. Ace looks at her. —Cat?
She sighs and
shrugs. —Oh man, all right.
He looks at me.
—Singer?
—Can I say no?
—It doesn’t have
to be beer. It could be wine. Or root beer.
—I guess I’d
rather, if I do something wrong, you just tell me and I’ll try not to do it
again.
Yoli rolls her
eyes. —Singer, it’s tradition.
—Well, I’ll pass.
Ace’s smiled
vanishes. —Pass? You can’t pass.
Everyone looks at
me, my face red, trying to say something. —Look, Ace—
He points at me,
angry. —No, you look. Everyone pays the couth fines, got it? End of discussion.
And so, for my
Bartleby-ness, I’ve apparently put myself in the running for the Whiner of the
Year award.
After twenty minutes we hit the fire-line where the crew from yesterday stopped, at a patch of green junipers. Bob sends Nando up the hill to scout while we pound water, sweating already. Joseph, from the Hoopa Valley Rez back in California, turns and grins and punches me in the arm, gorilla-like, almost knocking me over. —Singer! Ready to dig line, rookie?
An air tanker roars over, low
and loud, old orange and white two-prop plane. Helicopter somewhere, rotors
echoing through the canyons.
Nando radios all clear. The
sawyers choke their chainsaws, starting them, letting them warm and purr,
putting in earplugs, wiping sunglasses, tightening leather gloves. CK goes first,
gunning it, making it scream, ten feet off the fire edge, cutting brush and
small trees at their bases, with Lucky Charms swamping, both smiling and
laughing, deranged forest gnomes. Schmitt and Buckner go next. Schmitt wearing
his weird alien sunglasses looking like a tall skinny Communion Visitor, Buckner leaving most of his brush for Roo and
George, though neither complains. Once they’ve moved enough ahead, Yoli tells
Joseph to start digging.
He lifts his pulaski and
swings, gouging a chunk of oak brush at the root, moving two steps and taking
another. I raise my pulaski and let it come down, taking a chunk of my own,
hitting and moving, hitting and moving. Cat behind me with her chingadera,
sometimes digging like us, sometimes just scraping off the dead oak leaves. She
and I have both cut line before, on Type II crews, but this, a Type I hotshot
crew, is faster, more efficient. Yoli, my squad boss, walks with us, keeping
everyone working and not talking too much. Ace, the other squadie and the only
black man on the fire, if not New Mexico, walks by on his way a good lookout
spot. —Asses and elbows people! That’s all I want to see!
The fire at first just smolders
in juniper needles, but the warming sun increases the wind, both of which feed
fire, forming dark columns of smoke. Hot-wood crackle, flames in gamble oak. A
ten-mile-square mountain bonfire. The helicopter passes over with its huge
orange bucket hanging from a cable, stray drops of water on the dirt and my
shoulders. It hovers over a hotspot up ahead by Nando and Bob, releasing 300
gallons on a torching tree.
Hard to pace myself, shoulders
aching, pack not fitting well but no time to adjust. Sweat dripping off my
nose. Joseph just a digging machine—grub, step, grub, step—but the rest of the
crew looking how I feel: Faces red, sweat-soaked hair.
The tanker flies over again,
this time with belly doors opening. Yoli yells, —Heads up!
A heavy wet red cloud pours
down. I duck, closing my eyes. Cool slimy liquid sprinkles my shoulders and
neck, rattling my hardhat. When I open my eyes, the ground glistens red. My
yellow nomex shirt covered. Cat looks the same way. She laughs. Joseph punches
me in the arm again. —Woo-hoo Singer! First tanker drop! Thanks for the beer!
Yoli yelling again from the
back of the line. —Come on! Back to work!
Most of the smoke from the main
fire actually rising to the north, though we pass hotspots, and stay along the
edge of the black. By noon, we work up to a high rocky ridge, Ace’s lookout
spot, and stop for lunch. Paul wants us to stay put, to see what the fire will
do during the hotter part of the day. I eat some veggie soy jerky, offering
some to Cat. She wrinkles her nose, but tries it, and nods. —Man, it’s actually
not bad. Thanks, Singer.
Bob calls Ace on the radio,
needing what he calls a gazelle squad: saw team and a couple scrapers, in shape
enough to get out quick if needed, for putting in a check line. Ace points at
Schmitt and Buckner, telling them to get going, and looks at me. —Singer?
You’re a good runner.
I stand and grab my pulaski.
—Sure.
He looks at Cat and jerks his
head. —Go ahead, marathon runner.
We follow the saw team down off
the ridge. Bob waiting at the side of a steep open bowl. —Alright, just check
line. If we stop the fire from burning through here we won’t have to cut line
uphill and around it later. Don’t worry, I’m your eyes. Let’s git’er done
quick!
He and the saw team bump ahead
to the thicker brush and Cat and I dig, taking more with only two of us, me the
first half foot and Cat taking the other. I yell back, —You good with this
pace?!
She nods, not looking up. —Hell
yeah, man!
We catch up to Schmidt standing
knee-deep in cut piñon branches, yelling at Buckner. —Swamp that shit!
Bob standing watching. Paul
radioes about winds picking up, that we might want to come back. Smoke blowing
up below us, getting darker. I look at Cat and raise my eyebrows.
Bob turns to us. —You heard
him. Head on back. I’ll stay down here.
Everyone else still kicking
back at the ridge. A type II crew has come in, bunched up behind us in our
safety zone. The wind stronger, Paul having to cup a hand over his radio.
—Bobby, you’d better come up, the winds are getting squirrely!
—Doesn’t seem so bad down here.
—Well, it is up here!
A huge gust comes in and trees
below the ridge torch, flames fifty feet high. The type IIs nervous, looking at
us crazy hotshots sitting around joking. Ace glances at them, then me, smiling,
slowly pulling out a cigar from his front pocket and lighting it, puffing
softly, letting the smoke drift over. Joseph gets out a can of chew, taking a
huge gob and putting it behind his lower lip. —Don’t know nothing, do they Ace
of Spades?
—Hell no, Injun Joe. Fucking
deucers.
Joseph punches me in the arm
again. Basically every time he talks to me he punches me in the arm. —Used to
be you, huh Singer?
I nod and shrug. —Yeah, I
guess.
—Not no more though, huh? This
ain’t no trail crew. I wasn’t so sure about you with that long hair and shit,
but you work hard.
I smile. —Gee, thanks.
—For a hippie.
—I’m not a hippie! I hate the
Grateful Dead. I’m a metalhead.
He punches me again and laughs.
—Fucking Metallica and all that shit, huh?
Smoke now pouring over us. And
heat. Trees torching twenty feet away, but the flames can’t cross our rocky
clearing. Thin smoky fire-whirls in the sky. The type IIs retreat back down the
line, saying nothing, and then, just like that, the fire surge ends, the smoke
vanishing and flames dying down. Paul tells us to get ready to get back to
work.
Cat and I lean on our tools,
waiting, looking out on the valley to Taos way way down below, talking about
how people there probably couldn’t even imagine what we were doing. I couldn’t
have before last year when I’d started fighting fires. She takes a drink of
water, her face covered in dirt and ash. —It is cool being on a hotshot crew instead of a deucer crew. I like
being in the action, man.
Paul looks down off the ridge
for Bob, worried, but Bob’s voice comes over the radios. —Where are you guys?
Let’s get moving!
We line out. Ace hikes by Cat
and me, smiling. —Goddamn my rookies, you’re starting to look like hotshots!
Our check-line held. The saws
start back up and we cut and dig for hours. My arms and shoulders and back
almost numb, but I don’t complain. No one does, and we tie into a rock cliff by
the end of the day.
Then the long hike back out,
but with the setting sun turning the valley pink and orange and purple below.
Being tired and covered in sweat and dirt making the view that much better.
Back to our buggies, 13-1 and
13-2, SNAKE MOUNTAIN HOTSHOTS in big black letters on the sides. We hang out
and sharpen tools and saws, milking another hour of overtime. I doze on the
drive back down, even with all the bumps. Back at fire camp, exhausted, we pile
off the buggies and line up for dinner along with all the other hotshot crews,
Type IIs, and engine crews. Because we’re hotshots, we ignore everyone else but
other hotshots, checking out who looks the filthiest, meaning who worked the
hardest, though of course the guys check out the women, which seems to amuse
Cat.
Bird and potatoes for dinner,
which I pass on, opting for the meager vegematarian “salad bar,” lettuce and
some cherry tomatoes, though there are rolls. As hotshots, we eat quick—even
though we are now off the clock, there are still chores to do: Cases of water
and Gatorade to get. Saw parts, medical supplies (sunscreen, lip balm,
bandaids). Cat and I are in charge of filling the five-gallon water jugs for
each of our buggies.
After, I wander, checking
everything out: Pickup trucks and green Forest Service engines everywhere.
Hotshot buggies. Even two horses tied to a trailer. Diesel fumes. Showers on
the back of a semi. Clustered single-person pop-up tents, big khaki-brown
canvas caterer tents. Old green army tents for medics, human resources,
Incident Command personnel, with light shining out of open flaps and
light-green glow-sticks hanging outside entrances. Laughter, shouting, joking.
A carnival. The Forest Circus.
Hoping to run into her, in love
with her since that first day of work back in California when she pulled into
the parking lot in her old blue Toyota pickup, getting out with her black hair
pulled back in a pony tail. Faded jeans, black t-shirt, catwoman sunglasses and
a barbed wire tattoo around her left bicep. Most of us were already gathered up
outside the office. Ace smiled and said, —You look like you’re from Chicago!
And she raised her right hand
in a fist. —That’s right, man! Got a problem with that?!
I find her at the information
board, showered and reading a local newspaper article about the fire. She
smiles. —Hey Singer, I was hoping I’d see you.
I somehow summon the courage to
ask if she’d like to take a walk. She hesitates, but then says sure.
Off the main dirt road leading
into fire camp we find a two-track going south into piñons and a field of sage,
and lose the camp lights and noise, except the humming generators. Sky clear,
millions of stars, the Milky Way actually milky-looking. She closes her eyes
and takes a deep breath. —Man, it’s beautiful here. I love the smell of sage.
—I almost can’t believe they
pay us for this job.
She laughs. —Really?
—I said almost.
I ask about being one of two
women on a hotshot crew. She tilts her head, grimacing. —It’s like being a girl
on a boyscout camping trip. I don’t think Bob likes women though, on his crew
or otherwise.
—He doesn’t seem to like anybody.
She laughs again and breaks off
a piece of sage, holding it to her face. —Man, I don’t know why you’d want to be on a hotshot crew. But
I’m glad you are.
—Thanks, I guess. What’s that
supposed to mean?
—I don’t know, man. A
vegetarian philosophy major?
—This coming from the Spanish
major.
—Ok, bueno.
She looks at the sky and I look
at her looking at the sky. I step toward her. She turns. I put my hands on her
hips and kiss her. She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses back. —Wow man,
you move fast.
—Is that ok?
—I’m just stating a fact.
I slip my hands under her
t-shirt, touching skin. Her stomach, her back. No bra.
She steps back and puts her
hands on my chest. —We should go back.
We sneak back into camp,
splitting up before we get to the crew sleeping area so, she says, people won’t
say anything, though she gives a quick wave before heading for our tents, where
later I lie wondering about how there now is something that could be said.
Growing up in
Michigan, I didn’t even know wildland firefighting existed. A firefighter was one of those guys in the big red engines
in town. I was only vaguely aware of things like National Parks like
Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, though couldn’t have even told you that
Michigan had some. Nor did I know the difference between a National Park and a
National Forest, though Michigan has both. I couldn’t have even told you the
difference between a National Forest and a State Forest, or a county park even.
To a city mouse like me, parks were parks, woods were woods, forests were
forests. In lower mid-Michigan, down in the Rust Belt, the most outdoorsy thing
I ever did was take walks out in what even then I didn’t know was state
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) woods outside of Ann Arbor, and camping
was what you did in one of those crowded campgrounds by a lake somewhere for
the Fourth of July.
Not that I never
got out of a fifty mile square area like most Americans: my mother’s parents
lived down in Phoenix, so we’d visit them for holidays, and once we even did go
to the Grand Canyon. And it’s not that I was a shut-in, watching tv in my house
all the time. I was on the Pioneer High School varsity soccer team, and in
college at Eastern Michigan University I discovered running, for fun. Some of
my friends and I would take long walks on the trails around the Huron River.
But I just never went camping or anything, and never even went up to Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula. When I got to college, I heard about people doing that, but
that was for all the Forestry and Biology majors. I was just an philosophy
major, I just read books, mostly, though from high school on, my main focus was
music, playing guitar in various and sundry bands, so that my weekends were
more about gigs at The Blind Pig or the Heidelburg. Or, if I wasn’t playing, I
was probably there checking out other bands until, finally, the last band broke
up in my senior year, and I—gasp—found myself approaching graduation. Suddenly
I had to think, what exactly does one do with an philosophy degree? Stay in Ann
Arbor and continue playing to indifferent crowds of fifteen to twenty drunk
college students? And become one of those older guys I’d see still in the music
scene, trying to ‘make it’ while making sandwiches at Zingermann’s? No, I was
tired of Ann Arbor anyways, perhaps related to my breakup with my last
girlfriend, who had ended up sleeping with not one, but two, members of a rival
band.
Meanwhile, since I
had taken so long to get through college, the friends I’d had were already
gone, scattered across the country. This came both from Michigan’s economic
outlook—there were, and are, simply no jobs in Michigan for college grads— but
also, from all of us looking for something different, somewhere where we could
fit in, culturally, creatively. One writer friend decided to try getting into
publishing in New York. Another wanted to try acting in Los Angeles. Another
went to San Francisco because that’s where the Beats hung out and because he
was gay.
And I certainly
wasn’t going to stay with my parents. My dad was re-married with a whole other
family by then. My mom had sold our old house and moved into a condo. We were
never the most affectionate family anyways.
Time to go. Time
to leave. Time to do something different. But what?
I went into
Eastern’s Student Services office my last semester, the first time I’d actually
even been there, and seeing all these people my age, my classmates, dressed in
suits, the guys with short hair and ties, interviewing with companies like 3M
and General Electric. That was Hell. I walked out.
I wasn’t so sure I
wanted the big city life. I wasn’t so sure about anything though, except that I
should do what my literary heroes did: Melville, Hemingway, Kerouac, they all
went off and had adventures, so I would too. When I graduated in December 1993,
with money I got from selling my amps and most of my guitars, plus some
graduation present money from relatives, the only thing I could think of was to
go hike down into the Grand Canyon. I figured it was Arizona, the desert, it
would at least be warm.
Well, when I
finally got there, in February, with a new backpack and everything, there was a
foot of snow at the South Rim. But, with the help of the backcountry rangers, I
did eventually get down into that huge space, even bigger and more amazing than
I remembered. This all a whole story in itself, but my life changed by just
happening to meet a guy, just on the trail, right by the Colorado River, who
worked as a wildland firefighter for the Park in the Summer. He was hiking for
fun at the time, but we got to talking and he told me about his job, going to
fires in the woods and digging in dirt, and I was like, You get paid for that?
He helped me get a
job first as a volunteer at the South Rim, which led to a summer job on a trail
crew. And my supervisor there was cool enough to let me go to the basic fire
training classes so I could get my ‘red card,’ qualifying me to go on fires as a
supplementary firefighter for the Park, if needed. Well, 1996 was a big fire
year, and that summer there were fires all over Arizona, and all over the
country. Our trail crew helped out on one down in the Kaibab National Forest,
just south of the Park. And, I’d never seen anything like it: probably about
four or five acres (though back then I didn’t yet think in acres) in the
ponderosa forest, with blackened earth and ash, and actual real flames. Not big,
nor moving fast, but at the time it seemed like the most dangerous thing I’d
ever seen. This was late afternoon, and the fire was already dying down. A Park
engine and Forest engine had already dug line around the fire. Again, not the
big red city engines—these were four-wheel drive flatbed pickup trucks, Park
white and Forest green, with pumps and 300 hundred gallon tanks of water. Us
trail dogs helped mop-up—digging up any hot or smoking areas, putting dirt on
them, or water if available, sometimes just scraping around with gloved hands.
We stayed on into the night, digging in that orange glow in the trees, embers
glowing like eyes, sparks drifting up into the sky. And again I was like, you
get paid for this?
With such a busy
fire season, resources were needed all over the country, and the Park and the
Kaibab would put together joint twenty-person hand crews to travel to other
parts of Arizona, or even out of state. One crew I was on went down to Sedona
for a big fire on the Mogollon Rim, and then towards the end of the summer
another crew went up to Yellowstone National Park, where I got my first of many
helicopter rides.
These hand crews I
was on were the Type II crews. The Type I crews were the Hotshots, the
elites—crews that worked together all summer long, and traveled all over the
West. Wherever the big fires were, that’s where they went. They were way more
in-shape, and more capable of handling rugged and dangerous situations, when
fires were in steep terrain. Once the hotshots got a fire under control, they’d
leave for the next fire and we would come in for mop-up. In bigger Fire Camps
on bigger fires, you could just tell: the hotshots knew what they were doing,
had their shit together, all wore the same t-shirt uniforms, and went to parts
of fires with the most activity and danger.
Plus, the women.
Once I got out west, I’d been seeing women that were outdoorsy and in shape,
which I’d discovered was really attractive. But the women on hotshot crews?
Awesome. There weren’t a lot of them, one or two every crew, and some hotshot
crews didn’t have any, but the ones that were there seemed just mostly badass.
My childhood fantasy come true, women right out of comic books, like Wonder
Woman, Elektra or Red Sonja, strong and confident, and wearing knee-high
leather boots.
That was what I wanted to do. So, after
that summer, I found a Wilderness ranger job down in the Superstition Mountains
for the Winter, and applied to all the hotshot crews in the Southwest and
California. Mostly hotshots hire from engine crews, but I didn’t even think
about doing that first: I’d seen the hierarchy, and ‘engine slugs’ were way
below hotshots. But, since I’d only been a lowly trail dog and Type II loser, I
didn’t hear anything, and thought I’d end up going back to the Grand Canyon,
until the Snake Mountain Hotshots called in mid-April. It was Nando. —Hey Dan.
You still interested in being a hotshot?
Hell yes.
The next morning we’re assigned
to the same area. The fire burned up to our line, but held. We work the edge,
mopping twenty feet in. No water except helicopter buckets, which Bob only uses
on heavier hotspots. So, just us, our tools, and dirt. The hotshot motto: Dirt
is my friend. With burning stumps, I scrape off the hot black parts using the
grubbing blade of my pulaski, and the axe blade to cut out roots, and Joseph
has already taught me how to throw on dirt, smothering it, cutting off the
oxygen.
While we work, Yoli stands on a
hill watching. —Singer! Don’t work by yourself!
I want to like Yoli. From the
Navaho Nation in Arizona, she's part of a program that fast-tracks minorities
up in leadership positions in Fire, which kind of automatically counts against
anyone, especially a woman, and though she’s no worse than some other Fire
people I’ve worked for, she’s not necessarily better, and seems to over
compensate for people’s opinion about her by being a little micro-manage-y. So
far in the season she seems to like me, I think because I don’t have a problem
with working for a woman, unlike some of our coworkers. And, I secretly think
she’s attractive. Not conventionally, she's kind of thicker, but it’s muscle,
and she can out-hike most of us, plus fit and tough and willing to get dirty.
The other guys claim to not really like women like her, or Cat even, and talk
shit about her all the time, but I suspect that involves their thinking Yoli is
kind of attractive too. But, yeah, she can be a little grating sometimes.
I look up at her, pushing back
my hardhat. —Yoli, it’s not that big of a stump. I’m almost done with it.
—Well, have Tony help you.
—Alright...
Tony the big goonie ‘third year
rookie,’ usually with a wad of chew in his lower lip. —Hey Singer so how you
liking fire-fighting? Not too bad huh? But I bet it got a little scary down in
that hole, huh? But that’s why we’re hotshots, we do shit like that. But we
also do shit like this. Here, let me get in there on that stump hole. You got
to use the dirt. Yesiree, dirt is a hotshot’s best friend.
I just stand back leaning on my
pulaski. —I think you got it Tony.
Yoli yells again. —Singer! You
guys are supposed to be working! Less talk, more work!
I cup my hands and yell up to
her. —We’re done!
—Ok! Well find something else!
—Copy! Tony, I’m going to try
over here.
Tony leans on his shovel,
spitting and smiling. —Alright well nice working with you. Maybe see you later.
See you on the next stump hole! Man there was this one time I stepped in a
stump hole and fell in up to my thigh. No shit, all ash, I could’ve broken my
leg and that would’ve sucked I tell you...
I go downhill, away from Yoli,
and find Teddie and Sasquatch working on a log. Teddie winks, smiling. —Tony
scared you away, huh?
—Does he always talk like that?
—Yep. Going on three years
nonstop.
Sasquatch nods. — The only time
he ever shut up was last season when he asked me to dare him to put a whole can
of Copenhagen in his mouth. This is when we’re going to Winnemucca in the
buggies. So I dare him and he does it, of course, laughing the whole time,
stuffing chew up inside both lips. He looked like a gorilla. Then he stopped
laughing and his face turned green. Then he grabbed a garbage bag and puked his
guts out.
—Great.
—Thing is, the puke was red.
—Thanks Sasquatch.
—It’s just, I couldn’t
understand if it was the Copenhagen that made it red or—
—Ok Sasquatch.
—Well at least he’s not in our
buggy.
—Hey you guuuyyyys!
Yoli just a small speck on her
hill, but we hear her clearly. Sasquatch turns around and shakes his shovel.
—What Yoli?!
—Less talk, more work!
—Fuck you Yoli! Fuck you and
your mother and your mother’s sister!
—Sasquaaaaatch! Stop fucking
around!
—It’s Singer’s fault! He won’t
stop talking!
—Singerrrrrr! Get to work! Go
find someone else! Work in pairs!
Teddie shakes his head,
laughing. —See ya Singer.
—Yeah hippie dude, later!
—You fuckers. And I’m not a
hippie.
—Well go listen to your Ozzy
Ozbourne somewhere else, we’re trying to work.
—Ok ok...
I pass CK and Lucky Charms
hiding under a juniper. They smile and wave and CK says, —Doing a fine job
Singer, a fine job.
Lucky Charms nods, —Yeah, call
us if you need something cut.
—Unless it’s got a lot of dirt
on it, then call Schmitt.
—But you’re doing a fine job.
On to Mountain Du, another
rookie, a small Hmong, digging in some smoldering needles under a juniper. —Hey
guy! I got fire here!
—Need some help?
—No man! I got it!
I look around. —Well, Yoli said
we should work in pairs.
—Ok man! You work this side and
I work this side!
—Alright...
And so on. By the end of the
day I work my way down to Cat, far away from Yoli or any of our fearless
leaders. Our section of line has basically died down anyway, and when I find
her she’s sitting behind a boulder writing in a notebook.
—Hey, mind if I pull up a seat?
She folds up her notebook.
—Sure man. I was just scribbling.
I find a flat rock to sit on.
—Diary?
—Poetry. Just trying to get my
thoughts down.
—What kind of thoughts?
—Oh man, life. Fire. What it’s
like. It’s hard to describe with words.
—And a picture doesn’t do it
justice either.
—Singerrrr!
Jesus. I turn and there’s Yoli
up on a clump of boulders in the black. I can’t escape her. —What Yoli!?
—We’re leaving! Come on!
On the hike out there’s more
joking and talking shit than yesterday, until Buckner points to movement in a
bush in the green. —A grouse!
The line stops and almost all
of the guys, even Ace, pick up stones, throwing them. A second grouse flaps out
of the brush, the two birds half-run, half-fly. Mountain Du actually hits one.
It flutters and crashes into the brush, disappearing, and the guys cheer.
Cat leans over to me,
whispering. —Is this normal, man?
I shake my head slightly. —It’s
like a Three Stooges episode.
Once we’re hiking again, Tony
yells up to me from the back of the line. —Hey Singer if we caught a grouse
would you eat it? Like in the wild? Do you eat fish? My grandma never ate fish.
Especially catfish—
Sasquatch turns around. —Tony
shut uuuuup! I’m sick of you already!
—Alright Sasquatch. Hey
remember last year when that bear—
—Tony I’m going to come back
there and rip your balls off and stuff them down your throat if you don’t shut
the fuck up right now!
The fire just kind of fizzles
out due lack of winds. We do a few more mop-up shifts then get de-mobed and
sent down to Albuquerque to stage and do project work for the Santa Fe National
Forest, staying in a hotel right off of I-40. I get paired up with Lopez, a
thick guy, still with a crewcut from his army days, his clothes and toiletries
neat and orderly in his red bag, compared to mine stuffed in a big pile.
I shower first, leaving it open
on the bed, so when I get out, he points to my copy of The Nietzsche Reader sitting on top. —You into that philosophy
shit? Cool, you’ll be a good influence. You’ve got to tell me about some of
that non-violence shit. Sometimes I just lose it, like when a guy’s looking at
my bitch. She’s a good influence too. I love her.
—You can borrow it after I’m
done.
—Cool.
The hotel next to a Target,
where most of the crew ends up, buying things they forgot or realize they need
before we left California. After being out in the woods for days I’m in shock
coming in a huge store filled with colors and clean things. I suddenly want to buy
something, anything, and find a portable CD player with a big pair of
headphones to cover my ears and shut out the world on the buggy or in fire camp
at night when everyone is still talking and snoring and farting. It’ll be the
most practical thing I buy that summer. Meanwhile I go half-mad passing the
women’s underwear section, wanting to rub my face in all the soft clean
panties. Yoli and Cat are actually in the men's section getting boxer briefs—essential
since with all the hiking we do, our nomex pants tend to rub the wrong way on
our thighs. Sounds funny, but it’s not. Still, the idea of them in boxer briefs
is kinda hot.
The next day we stick-stack for
the local district, clearing out small trees and underbrush near houses
bordering the Forest, in order to reduce the fire hazard, throwing all brush in
piles to be burned at the end of the season. Sawyers go through cutting while
the rest of us stack them in piles. We wear ear-plugs because of the chainsaws,
I can hear my heart pumping and my breathing with every thunky step. Carrying branches
over to a pile, throwing them on, walking back for another armful. Repeat. All
day.
The sawyers and swampers are
saw-hogs and only trade off cutting with each other, but fortunately the
district has some extra saws, so Bob has Ace give us rookies some saw training.
We’ve had the S-212 Intro To Chainsaws
class back at our Forest, I’ve already gotten to handle them a little, but
being out in the field with a bunch of other young men and chainsaws is both
exciting and a little terrifying. Some of the guys on the crews grew up with
them but to me, a chainsaw is something you perform massacres in Texas with, or
something Tina Turner would have you use in the Thunderdome. And believe me,
for Tina Turner, I would.
But the spinning chains, the
teeth, the growl, the killing of trees. There is a special place in Tree Hell
for hotshots, and I’ll be there. At the top rung maybe, but I’ll be there. But
yes, a rush, and addictive, even though all we’re doing is cutting up brush and
little baby reprod trees. A lot better than swamping, that’s for sure. And a
workout too—after one full tank I’m drenched in sweat, my nomex soaked. Carrying
and lifting twenty-five pound for a half-hour: No wonder all the sawyers have
biceps as big as they trees they’re cutting. And we’re not even on a fire: I
can’t imagine doing this with the pressure of having to keep up with other
teams on a fire line. Plus, like, trees going up in flames nearby.
Secretly—I'm not even sure Bob
and the foremen know—one at a time, Ace takes us out into another section of
the woods so the district people wouldn’t see us cutting any trees down. After
lunch I get my turn. He hands me the chainsaw. —Start her up.
I choke it once because it’s
been sitting for while, like I’ve been taught, and it coughs. Taking the choke
off, left hand gripping the handle, trigger guard between my thighs, I pull the
cord, and it growls alive. I let it idle while Ace points to a small tree.
—Take that one down! Now remember, think of your saw like a penis: You always
got to know where the tip is! Don’t just look at this side of the tree, look or
else get a feel for what your saw is going on the other side of the tree!
I try to hold the saw sideways,
bar parallel to the ground, not as easy as it looks, until Ace has to show me
how to just let it just hang from my left hand, where it balances perfectly.
Pulling the trigger, the chain spins, cutting, pulling itself into the wood. I
try for a third of the way in, but over-cut to about half. Pulling the bar out,
I lift the saw, turning it forty-five degrees, and go in diagonally for the
‘pie cut.’ The pie chunk falls away and I back up to check my work. And...it’s a
huge crooked gap.
Thankfully Ace doesn’t
laugh.—Alright for a rookie! Go ahead and do the back cut!
I turn the saw over, putting it
on the other side of the tree, lining the bar about an inch higher than the
face cut. Ace yells, —Falling!
The bar cuts in, and I look up:
the tree top moves. Ace taps me on the shoulder, signaling me to step away. I
do, and the tree falls and hits with a crack and a boom, the butt end popping
up in front of us.
He motions me to turn off the
saw. —See that? That’s why we back up. If you stayed there it could’ve come up
and broken your jaw. Let's do some stump analysis.
We walk over and look at my
stump: The back cut off-angles from the face cut and I slice through my holding
wood on the right side, causing the tree to pull to the left. And the back cut is
low, almost lower than the face cut. So shit. Ace smiles though. —Like I said,
not bad for a rookie. You got the tree on the ground and nobody got hurt.
When I get back to the crew,
Cat is smiling. —Well? How does it feel to kill an innocent tree, man?
—Primal. Very primal. So, how
about you? Did you like thinking you had a penis?
She laughs. —Ace had me imagine
it was a huge strap-on. It was cool, man. He said I was a natural.
We stick-stack for days, every
night coming back and re-checking into the same hotel. Bob would prefer us
sleeping in the woods, to toughen us up, and he hates wasting taxpayer money,
but tells us that’s the way the government works: use up your fire budget every
year or else the bean counters in Washington will think you don’t need it.
Though maybe someone, somewhere, is trying to be good to us, keeping us clean
and rested while away from home for so long. I actually agree with Bob, not
because of money, but because I sleep better outside. In the woods I can go off
by myself and sleep when I want, breathing cool night air and looking at the
stars, whereas sharing a hotel room with another person means, as with Lopez,
that they probably like to watch tv all night, and snore. Plus I can’t
masturbate.
Whenever one of us
rookies does something wrong, the vets have always yelled, ‘Thanks for the
beer!’ but never explained what it means, until Ace and Yoli finally sit us
down in the woods one morning when Paul, Nando and Bob aren’t around. The
‘couth system’ started way back with the first Snake Mountain Hotshots, when
someone was ‘fined’ for doing something ‘un-couth,’ like wearing their hat in a
restaurant, or not tucking in their shirt, but which eventually grew to include
someone fucking up, forgetting their gear, leaving vehicle lights on, being
late for work, et cetera.
Eventually—because why not, hazing is fun—it also came to include
‘rookie-firsts’ fines, like first helicopter ride or first time in another
state. The idea being to penalize not by paying money, which of course would be
illegal, but by buying beer for the end-of-the season party. So the ‘fines’
come in six-pack increments, about five dollars per sixpack, with the ‘Couth
Master’ (this summer, Roo) keeping track in a little notebook.
After explaining
this, Ace smiles and spreads his hands. —It’s just a way we hotshots have of
keeping each other in line.
Yoli nods. —And
it’s tradition.
Ace looks around
expectantly. —So, are you all in?
The other rookies,
Mountain Du, Otter and George, all nod. Cat and I both sit with our arms
crossed around our knees. Ace looks at her. —Cat?
She sighs and
shrugs. —Oh man, all right.
He looks at me.
—Singer?
—Can I say no?
—It doesn’t have
to be beer. It could be wine. Or root beer.
—I guess I’d
rather, if I do something wrong, you just tell me and I’ll try not to do it
again.
Yoli rolls her
eyes. —Singer, it’s tradition.
—Well, I’ll pass.
Ace’s smiled
vanishes. —Pass? You can’t pass.
Everyone looks at
me, my face red, trying to say something. —Look, Ace—
He points at me,
angry. —No, you look. Everyone pays the couth fines, got it? End of discussion.
And so, for my
Bartleby-ness, I’ve apparently put myself in the running for the Whiner of the
Year award.
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