Monday, September 22, 2003
This is so cool.

I just flew back to California after a brief, beautiful flurry of east coast weddings and reunions, and (from San Fran) am rushing north at the moment so that I can grab my line gear, jump in a fire truck, and then race back south to join my crew in the Inyo National Forest (think I covered all the cardinal directions there).

The cool part: well, there're a couple, starting with the fact that from my little plane window I got to see the entire country I'll be driving across (again) a month from now.

The other cool part: I totally saw the 2,000-acre wildfire where I'll be working for the next 12 days. I tend not to socialize too much on airplanes, so I had no one to share this with except y'all. The telltale Sierra Mountain granite was easy to recognize after Martian Nevada, as was Yosemite, which had a half dozen white smoke columns scattered throughout its hills.

Saturday, September 13, 2003
Culture shock and awe.

I'm at a wedding in Boston, trying to remember which fork to use as I attempt to politely explain what I do to people who don't smell like smoke and body odor (the perfume I'm used to).

Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Finally got a fire page up on my website. Be sure to click on "meet my crew."

Monday, August 25, 2003
I write to you from a blackened, smoky reality that, even in its intense quiet, fills me with a shocking sense of awe. I write to you, not from my desk on Main Street in French Gulch, but from the woods, leaning against a tree deep inside one of the largest, most spectacular tracts of wilderness in this country.

This is the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the Flathead National Forest, a.k.a. “The Bob” to locals (said with a knowing nod), a.k.a. the “Babe Marshall Wilderness” among my crew (in honor of the high percentage of uncommonly beautiful backcountry rangers, fire fighters, and trail workers found within its boundaries). I write to you not with a computer keyboard, but with a pen, scrawling these words across the back of a ratty topo map that I found inside the cabin.

I write to you from the middle of a 20,000-acre wildland fire in the shadow of the Continental Divide.

I write to you from Montana; and Montana, in case you haven’t heard, is burning.

Clarification: the word “fire” above refers to both actively burning acres and those that have already burned, a.k.a. “the Black.” The Black is usually a very safe place to be, as it contains little available fuel to feed further combustion. So although this cabin sits in a tiny island of burnable green, vast stretches of slicked-off Black protect us from the active flame front, four miles south of here toward Big Prairie. Even so, at night, when it fills with smoke, the Black often feels more menacing than protective.

When a naturally caused wildfire is allowed to burn (for “maximum resource benefit” in the jargon of forest managers), one of the principal jobs of my crew is structure protection. This entails herding the fire around backcountry buildings and shielding them from burning embers. We clear the immediate area of down wood and dead trees, wrap the entire structure in fire shelter material (fiberglass-lined aluminum foil), and wet down the area by pumping water from the nearest creek or river into a sprinkler system. This is how the previous crew saved the Salmon Forks cabin, defending this bit of green as the fire raged through.

Unfortunately, I was not here to witness the show, when all this Black was red and roaring with heat. I must be content with the spectacle that remained: so much scorched stillness, black earth, and bare, black toothpick trees. The sun, a red-orange ball of jelly, day in and day out; daylight, a dusky haze until darkness creeps in and it is night again.

After a week of this, the effect is quite eerie . . . surreal.

I arrived here after five days of hiking, helicopter riding, and horse-packing through this forest in a mad flurry of cabin-wrapping, smoke, and sweat. I am now stationed at Salmon Forks with crewmate and kindred spirit, Brandon Dethlefs. The Black around our cabin ensures it against future re-burns, but the wooden packers’ bridge over yonder crick remains threatened because of an unburned section of trees that could carry fire to it.

Brandon is a journeyman fire fighter, father of three, family man with a wild, youthful hair up his ass, and damned good company. This last point is rather important when the nearest human being is 15 miles from here, upriver, guarding the structures at the Big Prairie stock compound. There’s another Ranger Station 30 miles north at Spotted Bear. From there, it’s 60 miles to the nearest paved road, and even farther to the town of Kalispell. We have radio contact, of course, and a satellite phone for emergencies, but we are decidedly Out There . . . and we feel it.

It feels good.

Monday, August 4, 2003
FIRE WARS! This excellent show on the world of wildland fire is being re-broadcast on PBS tomorrow night (Tuesday, Aug. 5 at 8 p.m.); the website's got some great stuff as well.

Sunday, August 3, 2003
I am sitting under the overhang of a granite boulder, watching it rain on our fire. There is just enough space for two of us to stay dry, and we appreciate this as the sopped, blackened slope around us fills with moisture, smoke, and steam. There are still some flames—in the catfaces of old snags, and on the underside of several down trees—but, for all intensive purposes, the Tamarack Fire is out. Matt jokingly says, “Let’s mop this shit up and go to Montana,” referring to the massive fires in Glacier National Park which we hear about on our daily sit-reports.

Monsoon rains brought storms and lightning up and down the Sierra Mountains over the last two weeks, enough to start several dozen wildland use fires in Yosemite alone and thus get our team ordered up to monitor them. However, upon arrival, the rains pick up, canceling out the fire and turning us into “fire morticians,” responsible for hiking to the scattered blazes and declaring their lack of potential growth—or their death.

Still, getting paid to hike around the Yosemite backcountry ain’t a bad gig. Several times, we break up into small teams, are given lat-long coordinates, and sent cross-country, navigating by GPS, map, and compass until we find our smoke (or lack thereof). The recon helicopter flies overhead, asking us if there is anything we want them to check out; radio chatter from a big suppression fire on the Stanislaus National Forest reaches our handhelds; we take lunch at stunning spots, across the river from Starr King Mountain, atop El Capitan.

But we came here for fire, not rain, and morale begins to drop, ever so slightly.

That’s why we are excited to learn that our 14-day assignment is getting cut short. We demobilize for a quick day off back home (after a quick night of rockin’ in Reno), and tomorrow morning, we are off for the north: to Montana.

Friday, July 25, 2003
Sequoia was beautiful: our assignment was a five-day mop-up of a fire that had already mostly burned out. Still, there was plenty of work to do and we hiked in through a grove of some of the biggest trees in the world, smoke still ghosting around the house-sized trunks and smoldering stumps. Fire camp was at a breathtaking 8,863' above sea level and we got all our food and gear (except for our fire packs) slung in by a helicopter.

Mop-up is dirty, grimy, sweaty, ashy, and muddy, probably the most unglamourous and most common part of wildland fire fighting. It consists of seeking and putting out the last scattered smokes (still burning in punky logs, "duffers," stump holes, and "candle-sticks"); we also had to clean up all the equipment: flaked 10,000 feet of hose through which we'd been pumpinig water from a little creek at the bottom of the unit, and then readied it all for the helo.

We get one day off at home now, then we're driving back south to our first fire-use fire of the season: in Yosemite! I'll be there for at least 14 days, possibly a lot longer. There has been a great deal of lightning over the Sierras lately (wandering moisture from a gulf hurricane), and Yosemite has 11 natural fires going at the moment. We'll be adopting one of these, somewhere near Tamarack Flats, I believe.

Friday, July 18, 2003
Game on! The call finally came in; we're headed south, to Sequoia & King's Canyon National Park, both to monitor a 20-acre slopover from a prescribed fire, and in anticipation of a big-ass lightning bust this weekend (re: more fire in the wilderness to manage as "use fires"). Stay tuned . . .

Sunday, July 13, 2003
Just found out that Johanna, one of my crew mates, has been stealthily posting fire photos from our various assignments. She does good work, check 'em out.

Sunday, July 13, 2003
We're still here! Our crew rig has been washed and waxed to the point of obsession and we are starting to believe the illusion that we have actual lives outside our jobs -- an unprecedented three free weekends in a row will do that.

I, for one, took advantage by hiking deep into the Trinity-Alps Wilderness. I went light, trusting to the clear, dry skies that I would not need a tent, and I was not let down. One of the most spectacular solo hikes of my life, bivvying atop stunning mountains and feeling very Tolkien-esque, my blood surging with freedom, power, and rage!

Sorry, the mountains do that to me.

Tuesday, July 8, 2003
Because of a communication mixup, we missed an assignment and have been stuck at our home base in Whiskeytown for nearly two weeks. The up side is that I got to go to the High Sierra Music Festival last weekend. The down side is that we're all jonesin' to be on a fire in the middle of the wilderness instead of doing hose lays and inventories here on base. With any luck (and the cooperation of Pele, Goddess of Fire) we'll be rolling to Utah or New Mexico by the end of the week.

Monday, June 30, 2003


Although there is a wide range of impressive facial hair in the world of fire, when the chips are down, it's all about the moustache. The above specimen was observed on our Burn Boss at Lava Beds; this is a classic command 'stache, years in the making.

Once I get my own digital camera, I promise more samples. In the meantime, I've adopted a burly handlebar in a meek attempt to fit in:

Saturday, June 28, 2003
My friends back east are seeing lots of news coverage on the big fires in Arizona, and they naturally ask me if I am working there. The answer is no. Fire suppression is not the job of a Fire Use Module. Fire management is, and nine times out of ten, we'll be assigned within the National Park system (or occasionally in a National Forest). Here's a current list of NPS fires (whether they be prescribed, research, natural, or arson burns). Chances are, if we're not working/training/burning in our home base of Whiskeytown, we're at one of the fires listed at the above link.

Saturday, June 28, 2003
The burn was a wash. Actually, it was driving sleet and snow that met us when we rolled into camp Monday night. Our first concern was setting up our tents in such a cold, wet mess -- our next was realizing that the park had been soaked through by the freak storm and our burn was cancelled. Instead, we ended up "hacking and stacking" all week, working a thinning project that had us killing all the pinyon junipers and pines we could get our chainsaws on. "Fire fighting" takes strange forms sometimes.

Still, Great Basin was spectacular, especially when it cleared up and we found ourselves in a crisp, green, forgotten spur of the Rocky Mountains, high up in Nevada.

Home for the weekend, training till Wednesday, then we await our next assignment. Our boss says he "sees the Grand Canyon in our future." There's a use fire there with a module already managing it, but someone will have to rotate in when their 14 days are up . . .

Sunday, June 22, 2003


The goofy-faced, clean-nomex newbie; monitoring in Lava Beds

Sunday, June 22, 2003
My crew leaves tomorrow morning at 0500 (or, as my boss put it, at "Oh God-Thirty") in the a.m., bound for Great Basin National Park in the eastern Nevada high desert. This is something like a 16-hour drive; lunch in Reno. We'll be working with several other Fire Use Modules on a small (300 acre) burn at about 8,000 feet above sea level. Goal is pinyon juniper and white fir mortality. (Killkillkillkill.)

As most of you have heard, fire season is officially under way, especially in the southwest. That means that this Great Basin gig will probably be one of our last prescribed burns until the relative humidities comes back up in the fall. Instead we'll be working mosty "fire use fires" this summer, i.e. naturally caused (lightning) fires in the backcountry that are being allowed to burn but need monitors to learn from them and to make sure they behave. That'll be a whole new side of this job for me, and it's one that will involve lots of wilderness, possible helicoptor rides, and, as of yesterday, a pair of Blackhawk brand "HELLSTORM TACTICAL ASSAULT GLOVES."

So I got that goin for me. Which is nice.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Completed a 14-day assignment back in Lava Beds National Monument last week (northeastern Cali), completing the 1400-acre prescribed fire. that we began in May. I served as a fire lookout, a weather monitor, and an engine crew member. The latter was the most physically strenuous, humping several thousand feet of hose-lay across the desert and containing our fire to its assigned play area. We spent the nights camped out at the Tule Lake Fairgrounds and commuted through a vast wildlife preserve each morning and night, working consecutive 12-16 hour days.

We're home for training this week, burning with the Nature Conservancy tomorrow, then off again on Monday, this time to Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. My learning curve is still straight up and my neck is getting redder . . .

Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Here's an excellent article about the current conundrum facing our country's wildland fire fighting program in the June issue of Outside Magazine. It's called "We're Toast" by Douglas Gantenbein, and although he fails to mention Fire Use Modules, he does suggest the need for teams of year-round fire managers (or "pyrotechnicians") who specialize in prescribed burns, fire use, and fuels management. That's us. He also calls for an end to the Smokejumper program, claiming that their time is past and their $20 million annual budget is a waste. Check it out.

Monday, May 26, 2003
The World of Fire is as intriguing and inspiring a place as I expected it to be, but at this stage, I’m still rather overwhelmed by all there is to learn and observe.

Understand that I have, in one fell swoop, found myself at the very epicenter—Northern California—of the wildland firefighting world. Through a bit of personal tenacity and several fated strokes of pure dumb luck, I walked right into the throbbing heart of a vast American sub-culture. For even as I learn how to talk the talk and walk the walk (feeling somewhat like a spying outsider as I don my yellow nomex and red hardhat), I interact daily with the eclectic populace of this fascinating society, all embroiled in the same politically charged ambitions present in any corporation. The difference is that here, in fire, there is the added spice of militaristic machismo, federal government bureaucracy, and the domineering forces of Mother Nature.

Every day I listen to tales told that, if properly transcribed, would make for a stunning series of stories. There are chest-puffing smokejumpers and hotshotters, bear-hunting engine bosses, brainy fire ecologists, and a vast array of black-booted foot soldiers, all simultaneously interacting in warm camaraderie and backstabbing personality clashes.

It is indeed a burly world and as I penetrate ever deeper, my over-riding thought is that I must start taking more notes. This, of course, in addition to doing my job and doing it well.

Tuesday, May 20, 2003
My boss likes to say that putting fire back into the environment (which is what we do, both by burning and by let-burning) is on par with re-introducing the wolf and grizzly bear.

I've been lucky to be performing such noble deeds in my backyard these past few weeks, working a prescribed burn here in Whiskeytown. I've been able to come home at night (abeit stained with smoke, diesel, and poison oak), have had my weekends free, and have, in general, been trying to enjoy this idyllic house-in-the-country as everything around us clicks into summertime and the future, in more ways than one and on a day-to-day basis, is excitingly uncertain.

Saturday, May 10, 2003
Our attempt to burn a 120-foot wide black line perimeter around a 1,400-acre unit of high-desert scrub in Lava Beds National Monument was shut down by high winds and a forecast of snow on Wednesday. We managed to put some flame on the ground (actually in the sage, juniper, and bitter brush, which smelled nice) and I got to see a prescribed burn in action for the first time in seven years. I also got to feel the burn earned from holding a drip-torch at the end of an extended arm for some four miles over tricky volcanic footing.

It was an impressive production, the coordination of the 100 people involved in the operation, and hopefully, we'll get invited back to finish the perimeter job and then witness the torching of the unit's interior -- from napalm-slinging helicopters.

Thursday, May 1, 2003
Here's a decent overview of the Park Service's policy toward wildfire and why I will be burning our national parks next week.

Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Game on! This Sunday I'll complete my basic wildland training, receive my license to fight fire (a.k.a. my "red card"), and then, 12 hours later, leave with my team for the desolate expanses of northeastern California. We'll camp under the stars by night and burn by day, dragging drip torches through the brush in Lava Beds National Monument. I'll be back home next weekend, then we're off to another prescribed burn in eastern Nevada (Great Basin National Park).

I'm sitting out on the porch now, watching a late sunset and oiling my boots. There are brand new, luminescent green leaves on all the trees on Main Street -- and the Gulch is abuzz for the big Lemurian Mountain Bike race it is hosting this weekend . . . but I'll be in class.

Saturday, April 26, 2003
When one enjoys a working career as disjointed and seasonally transient as mine, one is constantly on the lookout for seemingly random links that offer the slightest hope of explaining one's life with some (any!) hint at continuity. During the last 10 years, I have found myself an Outward Bound Instructor, a Forest Service Fisheries Biologist, a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, a guidebook writer, and (as of last Monday) a wildland firefighter on a National Park Service "Fire Use Module."

These disparate existences have taken me to some remote corners of the continent and all have paid me to travel, write, hike, canoe, teach, or perform some bizarre combination of these activities -- and others.

But the real continuity of my various lives lies elsewhere -- it is more elusive, and I only recently got a glimpse of it; thought I'd share:

First of all, Outward Bound was brought to this country, in large part, to train the first Peace Corps Volunteers in 1961. The pre-service training took place in Puerto Rico (for volunteers headed to Africa) and in Colorado (for those going to Nepal). Both organizations were thus birthed into the world together, and both teach the same leadership philosophy, summed up by Lao Tzu's

"But of a good leader, who talks little
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
The people will say, "We did this ourselves."

This link was fairly obvious, as I was given the above passage during my training period with each organization. But how to connect my new gig? I found a possible answer while reading one of my firefighting texts. It was another quotation, this one from William James's "On the Moral Equivalent of War," 1910. James, I was once told by a salty old Outward Bound veteran (and veteran of three combat tours in Viet Nam), "recognized the positive qualities that warfare can bring forth in people: courage, self-sacrifice, devotion to a task, taking care of one another, sense of duty, camaraderie through shared adversity."

This was the Warrior Spirit, without the war, said the old salt. "A good Outward Bound course achieves that."

The next time I ran into William James was three years later (last week), sitting on a pillow in my house in French Gulch. It was in Pyne's "A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire," in which the chapter on the "Heroic Age" of wildland firefighting begins with a quote from "On the Moral Equivalent of War."

Coincidence?

Methinks not.

Commenting on the legions of new firefighters of his time, James wrote, "The martial type of character can be bred without war . . . If there were, instead of military conscription a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number years a part of the army enlisted against Nature . . . numerous other goods to the commonwealth would follow."

The "against Nature" part has certainly been rethought, especially with my team, where "firefighting" is actually "fire management," and our mission is to ignite and let burn more fires than we put out, but that's beside the point. The important part is James's stress on "strenuous honor," which I have encountered -- in one form or another -- in most of my aforementioned assignments.

Still, the link is small compared to others I suspect are out there -- this is only one more piece of a puzzle that I have a feeling will take a long time to finish.

Wednesday, April 23, 2003
I've passed my fitness tests, been issued my fireline gear and Park Service uniforms, and am ensconsed in all the officialdom and training that is typical (and expected) of joining a government agency. I am increasingly appreciative of the nature of the work I will be doing as a member of this team, which is very much a special, unique, and independent unit -- unlike the vast majority of wildland fire squads, which serve basically as ground troops with little or no say in the big picture. The mission and duties of a Fire Use Module, on the other hand, are far-reaching and diverse, and we are very much on the cutting edge of fire use theory and practice.

Much of what I'll be doing is explained here.

I am very much the rookie on the team and I expect my learning curve to be close to vertical for at least the first two months. This is a very Outward Bound-y place to be; on the "learning edge" where one can feel oneself growing. I have taken on some big projects in my life, and I don't think I've felt this challenged since my Peace Corps training, (incredibly) five years ago.

I'm still unsure as to what the extent of the Burly Blog will be in all this. My visions of live, satellite-bounced images and reports from the fire lines are not quite realistic, and I doubt I'll even be able to travel with my laptop. Inspiration is certain, however, and I have no doubt the experience will be duly recorded and eventually shared.

Monday, April 21, 2003
Back in the Gulch.

My new job as a wildland firefighter begins in about one hour with a team trail run through what looks to be about 38-degree fahrenheit driving rain. Then the fun begins -- I have very little idea of what to expect, just like I did when shipping off to Nicaragua way back when, or when driving out to California last fall "to see about a girl." I have come to have a healthy amount of trust and faith in these great unknowns, because they have led me here.

And here I am.

The edge of something so new is an exciting place to be and has always churned my juices. "Get up it's a new day!" sang my friend Ze before I left for my Nicaragua journey. "Get up it's a brand new day!"

Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Back from another show -- my first Barnes & Noble gig, Lawn Guyland style. Forty people, tons of questions, ran out of books. This Friday in the city's gonna rage -- pullin' out all the stops, baby -- freakin Greenwich Village! The Revolution lives! There'll be slides a-showin', a guitarra a-strummin', my mouth a-flappin' -- plus a coffee raffle, a freak show, and a bearded lady.

As the t-shirt I saw this afternoon in Times Square said, "NEW YORK F***IN CITY." That's kind of what I'm trying to say, but such language not being appropriate for this-here family burly-blog, I won't go there. Guess I shouldn't mention the other one, "F*** YOU, YOU F***ING F***" either, but there it was, y'know? Plus, one has to agree, such picante language does strike a certain chord: crude, unashamed, in your face, and quite enjoyable. NYC. My di-annual dose (twice a year). Then it's run back into the mountains -- deeper than where I've been, too; farther than French Gulch.

"Live in New York City once but leave before it makes you too hard; live in Northern California once but leave before it makes you too soft." -- not Kurt Vonnegut

Sunday, April 13, 2003
Check it -- you can click into a cyberspace-wide meditation hall. There are more nice ways to get your Buddha on at dailyzen.com.

Enjoy.

Sunday, April 13, 2003
The extraordinary thing about the new NYC smoking-in-bars ban is that people are actually observing it. Being New Yorkers however, they complain loudly -- while hacking down their schmiggies on the cold sidewalk.

I like.

Friday, April 11, 2003
Today, clad in my new Super Rainforests (see below, ad nauseum), I will burlily make my way to Nueva York. There I will don more black clothing in order to fit in with the natives, and I will attempt a hard gleam in my eye to further this effect. Of course, in these troubled times, there is a paranoid edginess in the Gothamites that I'm not sure if I will be able to manage. I will find out soon.

Tuesday, April 8, 2003
burly, adj: strongly built : STOUT, STURDY
(his burly ship slashed through 4-foot-thick ice --R.E. Byrd)

burliness, n: the quality or state of being burly

burlily, adv: in a burly manner

Monday, April 7, 2003
I went to Eugene, Oregon this past weekend and reveled in the random, reggae-fueled freakshow-ness of it all. Got an idea for a guidebook to America's best hippie towns, although something like "kind veggie towns" might be more appropriate, or at least carry less preconceived notions.

Fact is though, most of the hippies -- young and old -- are living in Eugene, Boulder, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Burlington, Asheville, and a few other scattered hamlets with lots of dogs, yoga studios, and whole foods stores. The yuppification rent-raising effects in such places is clearly most advanced in Boulder and Sedona, but they've all got soul.

Thursday, April 3, 2003
The saga continues: hummingbirds battle savagely, hundreds of logs truck on down the mountain, my 30-year-old birthday urine is lean and clean, and I am the proud new owner of a pair of Danners Super Rainforests. Yeah.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003
As I type, the view of Main Street through my front window is filled with dozens of purple irises (not yet blooming in photo), a parade of logging trucks as they thin the forests up-gulch, and, best of all, hummingbird wars as 5 or 6 of the little guys compete all day long for the sugar water in our feeder. They are terribly territorial and their growling hums are audible -- even over the gusts of wind, the wind chimes, and through the window glass.

I haven't bought my fire fighting shoes yet (got a flat tire going into town the other day), and it looks to be an increasingly complicated decision that will cost me more than a month's rent in the Gulch. But as my crew boss-to-be writes, "You're going to live in these things, if you go cheap you will pay in flesh from your sole (and toes and general pain). Get the best you can afford RIGHT NOW, no make that yesterday. Yes, I'm shouting."

Wildland firefighters (and loggers too, for that matter), take their boots seriously -- even the semantics ("A shoe laces up, a boot slips on...").

In Young Men and Fire, Norman MacLean writes, "...but I was young and still trying to escape such harsh realities as growing up and paying half a month's wages for a good pair of shoes."

So if I just turned 30 and now I go out and buy good shoes, guess that means I'm finally all grown up.

Sunday, March 30, 2003
Tomorrow is my 30th birthday. I'm going into town to take my first ever urine test so that the federal government will let me fight fires this summer. Then maybe I'll buy some boots and see a movie. Tomorrow will be my first day in town in over a week. I'm kind of a country boy.

Sunday, March 30, 2003
This is a weblog for Joshua Berman's homepage, stonegrooves.net, and his NicaDayz listserve. You'll find entries related to Nicaragua, wildland firefighting, small towns in Northern California, and anything else that happens to cross my mind or stumble through my life. Enjoy.