The Snake Mountain Hotshots (first 15 pages)

 First 15 or so pages from my novel The Snake Mountain Hotshots (formerly CAT or A Season In Fire)    

In the black: Moon-scaped ash and juniper tree skeletons. Buggies parked, we unloaded jumping out the back doors with our packs, grabbing tools and saws out side compartments, the only moving things under the already hot blue sky. Bob stood next to his supe rig, leaning on his shovel watching us. —Today people.

All twenty of us lined out in marching order: Saw teams up front behind him and Paul and Nando, then us scrapers. Bob told Paul to go ahead and we and headed up the hill. And for an older guy Paul to hike. The jokes and small talk ended quick. Just breathing, creaking pack-straps, banging fuel bottles, Vibram boot soles scuffing dirt, whispered cursing. Up through dry ash, kicking up a black cloud behind us, dusting out the guys in back.

In twenty minutes we hit fire-line where the crew from yesterday stopped, at a patch of green junipers. We smelled smoke. Bob caught up with us and ordered Nando up the hill to scout while we pounded water, sweating already. Joseph from the Hoopa Valley Rez back in California turned and grinned and punched me in the arm almost knocking me over. —Singer! Ready to dig line, rookie?

An air tanker roared over, low and loud, old orange and white two-prop plane. Helicopter somewhere, rotors echoing through the canyons.

Nando radioed all clear. The sawyers choked their chainsaws, gunned them, letting them warm and purr, putting in earplugs, wiping sunglasses, tightening leather gloves. CK went first, 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 went 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 complained. Once they moved enough ahead, Yoli told Joseph to start digging.

He lifted his pulaski and swung, gouging a chunk of oak brush at the root, moving two steps and taking another. I raised 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 had both cut line before, on Type II crews, but this, a Type I hotshot crew, was faster, more efficient. Yoli, my squad boss, walked 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, walked by on his way a good lookout spot. —Asses and elbows people! That’s all I want to see!

The fire at first was just smoldering in juniper needles and oak brush, but the warming sun increased the wind, both feeding fire, forming dark columns of smoke way out in front of us. Hot-wood crackle, flames in gamble oak. A ten-mile-square mountain bonfire. The helicopter passed over with its huge orange bucket hanging from a cable, stray drops of water on the dirt and my shoulders. It hovered over a hotspot up ahead by Nando and Bob, dumping 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 looked how I felt: Faces red, sweat-soaked hair.

The tanker flew over again, this time belly doors opening. Yoli yelled, —Heads up!

A heavy wet red cloud poured down. I ducked, closing my eyes. Cool slimy liquid sprinkled my shoulders and neck, rattling my hardhat. When I opened my eyes, the ground glistened red. My yellow nomex shirt covered in pink splotches. Cat looked the same way. She laughed. Joseph punched me in the arm again. —Woo-hoo Singer! First tanker drop! Thanks for the beer!

Yoli yelled again from the back of the line. —Come on! Back to work!

Most of the smoke from the main fire was actually rising to the north, though we passed hotspots, and stayed along the edge of the black up a ridgeling. By noon, we had worked up to a high rocky ridge, Ace’s lookout spot, and stopped for lunch. Paul wanted us to stay put, to see what the fire would do during the hotter part of the day. I ate some veggie soy jerky offering some to Cat. She wrinkled her nose but tried it and nodded. —Man, it’s actually not bad. Thanks, Singer.

Bob called Ace on the radio, needing what he called 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 pointed at Schmitt and Buckner, telling them to get going, and looked at me. —Singer? You’re a good runner.

I grabbed my pulaski and rolled myself up. —Sure.

He looked at Cat and jerked his head. —Go ahead marathon runner.

We followed the saw team down off the ridge. Bob was 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 bumped ahead to the thicker brush and Cat and I dug, taking more with only two of us, me the first half foot and Cat the other. I yelled back, —You good with this pace?!

She nodded not looking up. —Hell yeah man!

We caught up to Schmidt standing knee-deep in cut piñon branches yelling at Buckner. —Swamp that shit!

Bob stood watching. Paul radioed about winds picking up and that we might want to come back. Smoke blowing up below us getting darker. I looked at Cat and raised my eyebrows.

Bob turned to us. —You heard him. Head on back. I’ll stay down here.

We hoofed it back up. Everyone else was still kicking back at the ridge. A type II crew had come in bunched up behind us in our safety zone. Wind getting stronger. Paul had 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 came in and trees below the ridge torched flames fifty feet high. The type IIs were nervous looking at us crazy hotshots sitting around joking. Ace glanced at them then me, smiling, and slowly pulled a cigar out of his front pocket and lit it, puffing softly, letting the smoke drift over. Joseph got 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 punched me in the arm again. Basically every time he talked to me he punched me in the arm. —Used to be you, huh Singer?

I nodded and shrugged. —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 grimaced. —Gee, thanks.

—For a hippie.

—I’m not a hippie! I’m a metalhead!

He punched me again and laughsed. —Fucking Metallica and all that shit, huh?

Smoke was now pouring over us. And heat. Trees torching twenty feet away but the flames could’t cross our rocky clearing. Thin smoky fire-whirls in the sky. The type IIs retreated back down the line saying nothing and then just like that the fire surge ended, the smoke vanishing and flames dying down. Paul told us to get ready to get back to work.

Cat and I leaned on our tools waiting looking south out on the valley to Taos way way down below. We talked 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 took a gulp of water, 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 lined out. Ace hiked by Cat and me, smiling. —Goddamn my rookies, you’re starting to look like hotshots!

Our check-line had held. The saws started back up and we cut and dug for hours. My arms and shoulders and back were almost numb, but I don’t complain. No one did, and we tied 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 tyired and covered in sweat and dirt made 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 hung out and sharpened tools and saws, milking another hour of overtime. On the drive back down I dozed even with all the bumps. Back at fire camp, exhausted, we piled off the buggies and lined up for dinner along with all the other hotshot crews, Type IIs, and engine crews. Because we were hotshots we ignored everyone else but other hotshots, checking out who looks the filthiest meaning who worked the hardest though of course the guys checked out the few women which seemed to amuse Cat.

Bird and potatoes for dinner with a meager ‘salad bar’—lettuce and some cherry tomatoes though there are rolls which I slathered with butter. As hotshots we ate quick—no time to relax even though we were off the clock—there were still chores to do: Cases of water and Gatorade to get. Saw parts, medical supplies (sunscreen, lip balm, bandaids). Cat and I were in charge of filling the five-gallon water jugs for each of our buggies.

Afterwards I wandered around in the dark checking everything out: Pickup trucks and green Forest Service engines everywhere. Hotshot buggies. Even two horses tied to a trailer. Diesel fumes. Generators growling. 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.

I was hoping to run into her. Ever since that first day of work two weeks before back in California when she pulled into the district office 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 found her at the information board showered and reading a local newspaper article about the fire. She smiled. —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 hesitated, but then said sure.

Off the main dirt road leading into fire camp we found a two-track going south into piñons and a field of sage, and lost the camp lights and most of the noise except the humming generators. Sky clear. Millions of stars. Milky Way actually milky-looking. She closed her eyes and took 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.

We walked a bit further. She wasn’t actually from downtown Chicago but a small western suburb called Wheaton. Like when people from Royal Oak have to say they’re from Detroit to anyone outside of Detroit.

—So how do you like being one of two women on a hotshot crew?

She tilted 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 laughed again and broke off a twig 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 philosophy major?

—This coming from the Spanish major.

—Ok bueno. If I even finish.

—Why wouldn’t you?

She waved back at fire camp. —Because of this. Of fire. I want to be a smoke jumper now. I could learn spanish better just going to Costa Rica on my own in the off-season.

—Sounds awesome actually.

She looked at the sky and I looked at her looking at the sky. I stepped toward her. She turned. I put my hands on her hips and kissed her. She wraps her arms around my neck and kissed back. —Wow man you move fast.

—Is that ok?

—I’m just stating a fact.

I slipped my hands under her t-shirt touching skin. Her stomach, her back. No bra.

She stepped back and put her hands on my chest. —We should go back.

We snuck back into camp splitting up before we get to the crew sleeping area so people wouldn’t see or say anything though she gave a quick wave before heading for our tents where a bit later later I lay there wondering about how suddenly there was something that could be said.

At night I would wind down a bit by putting on my Discman headphones and listen to music whether flamenco or Voivod and read from my Nietsche Reader (Kaufmann translation)—sometimes or most times I would be too tired to read more than an aphorism or two but that was what I liked about Nietsche. That night I re-read this section 341 from The Gay Science:

How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, “This life as you now life it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurable small or great in your life must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence— even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust.” Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon you spoke thus? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, “You are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly.” If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you, as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would weight up your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (The Gay Science, 341 (p. 101 in Reader))

My Existentialism professor back at Michigan State had thought Nietsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Recurrance was something Nietzsche literally believed about reality—that the finite molocules in the universe would all eventually form again—but the ‘Doctrine’ was always an ‘as if’ proposal—are you living your life such that you’d be fine with having to live it again and again

I put the book down and lay back on my hotshot hoodie pillow and listened to Montoya’s guitar racing through the stars up above and thought about Cat and Fire and my life and at that moment I thought yes I could live through this again. That I’d chosen or ended up on a wild path that I was ‘well disposed’ to. Then I fell asleep.

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 said 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 when I was a senior and I 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? 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 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, desert, it would at least be warm.

When I finally got there after a nightmare Greyhound hell in February with a new backpack 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 gal Shawna on the trail right by the Colorado River who worked as a wildland firefighter for the Park in the Summer. She was hiking for fun at the time but we got to talking and she told me about her job going to fires in the woods and digging in dirt and I was like you get paid for that?

Shawna helped me get a job first as a volunteer at the South Rim which led to a summer job on the 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. 1996 was a big fire year with 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. 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—ometimes just scraping around with gloved hands. We stayed on into the night digging in that orange glow in the trees with embers glowing like eyes and sparks drifting up into the sky. And again I was like you get paid for this? I had the fire bug.

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 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.