Ursa Minor
It was midnight in the middle of July as I searched for constellations somewhere in the divide between Ursa Major & Minor, closer to Russia than I was home. It’s memories like this that inhibit the fear of missing out when fire season hits. It’s when my social media feed is full of videos of friends slamming line through the wilderness that cradles Los Angeles. I am a one and done hotshot, spending a single year among the hardest working folks I’ve ever met. My most memorable experiences happened in that one single year during the 2019 fire season.
We were ordered for Alaska in early July and took a NIFC plane with a total of 5 hotshot crews. We landed in Anchorage and soon we were parceled out into smaller units in smaller planes until we arrived on a primitive airstrip that supplied a mining operation just a little west of Denali. We made camp on a smaller defunct airstrip that supplied the mine nearly a century ago. The fire was burning far off over a few ranges, near to no sign or smell of smoke, but we were prepping the property creating defensible space if that possibility for a shift in winds occurred. It never did.
Regardless, we still worked hard tripping trees and piling for hours on end. After a few days the owner requested we actually slow down and that we were taking too much, and his entire operation would be visible to any onlookers passing by in bush planes. Following a few days of MRE’s we finally started receiving our supply boxes, mostly boxes full of Costco steaks, bacon, eggs, bread, snickers bars and seemingly countless other supplies needing counting and inventory to supply and feed 21 firefighters. I remember the entire assignment being mostly spent around cooking. A pot of coffee brewed over a fire day and night. We hunted native chaga mushrooms from the trees and added them to a second pot. We had daily cook off challenges with the smokejumpers, coming up with creative ways to turn a box of crackers, honey, apples and instant oatmeal into apple pies.
I never found the comfort to sleep, spending every night gazing at the top of my federally assigned tent before I would eventually walk off a hundred yards from camp to gaze at the night sky thinking of my bed at home. I thought about my soon to be daughter and how I was a full day worth of three flights away from home. One night, still bright and around 10:30 pm, everybody arose from their tents after someone yelled “bear in camp.” 20 full grown men trampled through camp like bears, crowded around supplies, grabbing sticks, axes, clapping and yelling obscenities at the bear head peaking from the brush just next to our candy supply. We later found out somebody was throwing hotdogs and snickers bars in the woods inciting this exact moment. The bear now had a taste for snickers bars. I jokingly grabbed the chainsaw and was immediately met with full support. I started the saw and the bear took off to the other side of our supplies, where it was met by the chaos of feral men.
We often exaggerate our stories looking back, every fire being the “best I’ve ever been on”. I learned through years of inflection, that reflection is nothing more than being enamored by the 15 minutes of euphoria of you experience after a fulfilling day of trauma. Embrace the suck. We talk about fire assignments like fishing trips. The fish is always bigger in the story. Anyway, here’s a video of me with a chainsaw squaring off with a little bear.
<3 Matt
