Young Men and Fire

by Norman Maclean

  The second basic agreement was their certainty that a Forest Service map prepared a month after the fire (“Helena National Forest, Mann Gulch Fire—No. 35, August 5, 1949: Fire Progress Map”) incorrectly locates the origin of Dodge’s fire, a certainty essentially derived from their first one—the map’s location of Dodge’s fire isn’t compatible with the location of the crevice. I had long had some misgivings about Map No. 35 because it had been prepared immediately after the fire, so I had gone in search of another and had found the 1952 contour map, which I had come increasingly to respect. I should add here that on the 1952 contour map the origin of the escape fire is located close to where it is on Map No. 35.

  I joined the circle of gestures just as Sallee was saying, “The map places it too far back toward the mouth of the gulch. If that’s where Dodge lay down in his escape fire, then I couldn’t have seen him entering his fire or the crew angling up the hillside after passing him. There is a lateral finger ridge here that would have been between us and would have blocked my view from the crevice.”

  Sallee’s argument will be easier to follow if visualized on the photograph of Reba’s cross. Sallee has just decided that the origin of Dodge’s fire was at the base of the highest dead standing tree (marked X) between Reba’s cross and the reef, so close to the reef in fact that it is only sixty or seventy yards below it. Their crevice, they had decided almost immediately, is an opening in the reef just slightly to the right of the top of this highest tree. Remember, Sallee has always been positive that, coming out of the timber, he looked ahead and saw Dodge lighting his fire near a lone standing tree. In this photograph, then, it is almost as straight as a ruler from Reba’s cross to the two most important points we were trying to locate—first, from Reba’s cross to the origin of Dodge’s fire as located by Sallee (X) and second, from there to the crevice both Sallee and Rumsey had just crawled through. Sallee accordingly is repudiating both Map No. 35 and the 1952 contour map, which locate Dodge’s fire outside the photograph, slightly farther downgulch than Reba’s cross.

  It makes a distinct dramatic difference to this photograph whether Sallee or the maps are right. If Sallee is right, then this photograph shows the whole final tragic scene, both where the final tragic decisions were made (at Dodge’s fire) and the adjoining field of final suffering. If, however, the maps are correct in locating the origin of the foreman’s fire outside the upper left corner of this photograph, then this photograph takes in most of the field of suffering but not the point where the big decisions were made.

  To follow Sallee’s argument against the location of the origin of Dodge’s fire on the maps, we must focus on the lateral ridges running down almost at right angles from the reef. These elevations have been formed by the dry gulches running on each side of them, and though these lateral gulches have water in them usually only in the spring, millennia of springs have cut them deep, a lot deeper than is suggested by this photograph. Sallee is correct that one of these lateral ridges (seen in the upper left corner of the photograph) would have cut off the view from his crevice to where the maps locate the origin of Dodge’s fire.

  Clearly, to Sallee the number one condition a map of the Mann Gulch fire must meet is that the origin of the escape fire can be seen from where he took his last look at Mann Gulch, a cartographic condition to be respected by anyone who has learned from the Bible to respect the last look behind.

  “Besides,” said Rumsey, “the map’s location of the origin of Dodge’s fire makes where we started just too far from the crevice. We never could have made it to the reef if we had to go that far.”

  “What’s more,” Sallee added, “it was beside a tree. I remember Dodge was stooped over near a tree starting a fire with his cigarette lighter.”

  “It was a gofer match,” I said, because I had put myself to some trouble to find out what a gofer match is—a paper match pulled from a matchbook. They were so unreliable that a firefighter trying to light a backfire with one would usually have to go for a second match.

  “I don’t remember a tree at all,” Rumsey said.

  “How could you forget?” Sallee asked. “There it is, still standing,” and he pointed at the dead tree in the photograph that is nearest the top of the ridge.

  Rumsey, with the composure of Kansas, repeated, “Dodge wasn’t standing near a tree.”

  On the hill, the base of the highest standing tree is in a much deeper depression than it appears to be in the photograph, and Rumsey believed that Dodge lit his fire not in a depression behind a finger ridge but near its crest and even closer to the reef than Sallee places it. So that is how matters stood, even after we called it a day and started back for the river. The difference between the two of them does not appear to be great—only forty or fifty yards—but it could be important.

  It was on our way back to the river that we stopped at the rock slide whereupon they collaborated in relocating the site of Hellman’s cross. It was a brilliant job, and Plato, who talks as if all knowledge depends upon memory, would have been pleased to see them performing this cartographic feat of relocating Hellman’s cross by remembering a flat rock and a tin can with two holes in the top of it.

  At the mouth of the gulch, a strange boat and two strange men were waiting for us. The men became more familiar as we got closer and soon agreed to help us drink the beer we had brought along to save ourselves from dehydration. They turned out to be the boatman who conducted tours through the Gates of the Mountains and a friend of his whom he had brought along to see the two living survivors of the Mann Gulch fire in the flesh. The standard tourist excursion starts at Hilger Landing and goes as far downriver as the mouth of Mann Gulch, where the tourists get a lecture on the Mann Gulch fire. The man who gives the lecture had come all the way downriver and had waited for us at the mouth of Mann Gulch in order to see his lecture alive. He had his friend pose Rumsey and Sallee for various photographs and was careful to include nothing that was not in his lecture, particularly not Laird or me.

  With an arm around each other and a can of beer in the hand that was free, the survivors didn’t look as much like ghosts as they had when they went up the hill, but at water level they were still impressive and I was still full of wonder. Among other things, I kept wondering if some of the big things we had done on the hill were wrong, even if they had been done by the best four men in the business.

  10

  COMING TO RECOGNIZE YOU ARE WRONG is like coming to recognize you are sick. You feel bad long before you admit you have any of the symptoms and certainly long before you are willing to take your medicine.

  I felt another trip to Mann Gulch coming on. Harry Gisborne had taken only one trip into Mann Gulch and hadn’t made it back. I had three trips to my credit, one each for the last three summers. If I had to make a fourth, I would be exactly twenty years older than Gisborne had been when Jansson left him lying on his back with the moon moving across the lenses of his glasses.

  Although I was reluctant about coming to Missoula this particular Friday, I actually came to town earlier than usual so Laird and I could report to Edward Heilman on the condition of the crosses in Mann Gulch. When we had been in Mann Gulch on July 1, all of them, we reported, had been inspected by at least one of our party and were in acceptable condition for the time being. I expressed the hope that the crosses would be inspected in another five years, since concrete crumbles fast on a hill exposed to record extremes of weather. He assured me that such an inspection would be made, and Laird spoke up and promised he would make the first five-year inspection plus a follow-up as often as needed. On this morning when some of the key stones seemed to be giving way in the small memorial of knowledge I was hoping to erect to the dead in Mann Gulch, it was somewhat comforting to be assured that at least the crosses would not be allowed to crumble away.

  When we sat down to lunch, I said, “It’s not right.” Laird said, “I know it, I know it.” Neither of us had to ask what the “it” was.

  I went on without paus
ing: “The base of that tall standing tree is too close to the reef—it’s probably no more than sixty or seventy yards from the crevice—and that makes where Dodge started his fire too close to the top. All testimony says it was about two hundred yards. That’s what the Board of Review said, and they were only quoting what the survivors said.”

  “Besides,” Laird observed, having been a foreman of Smokejumpers himself, “it doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to believe as tough a foreman as Dodge would call it quits as close as sixty yards from safety.”

  Laird may have asked the question, but I think I asked it, because I had gone into Mann Gulch hoping to find out not only more about fire and about death by fire but also more about the life afterwards of those who almost die by fire. So I think I was the one who asked, “Do you think they could have succeeded in trying not to remember?”

  I knew, of course, that Jansson had spent much of the rest of his life remembering. I had even heard that he told the Board of Review he would answer questions about his retrieval of the bodies only if he could testify with his back to them so that they could not see his face. The two survivors could be a very different case—they were young, one even underage, and they had almost died with almost all their life yet to live. Maybe when you almost die almost before you live there is a mechanism in you that makes you reduce your memories of death so most of life will not be based on death. I was making a world made up of guesses.

  It was Laird who said, “It’s sure strange that they remembered exactly where Hellman’s cross should be from at least half a mile away.”

  He added, “I can tell you something else that seems strange about that dead standing tree and the hillside.”

  I replied, “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you another and then let’s both go back to work.”

  He said, “If Dodge lit his fire at the base of that tree, then four or five of the crew, certainly Reba and Sylvia, died long before they caught up to Dodge. Their crosses are not nearly as far upgulch as where Rumsey and Sallee say Dodge stopped and lit his fire. But Dodge thought they all passed him.”

  Laird looked at his watch and asked, “What were you going to tell me before I went back to the office?”

  I told him, “I was going to tell you that I don’t think Dodge would light his fire in a depression, and the base of the highest standing tree is in a depression between two lateral ridges.”

  I had a reason to back up this conviction that I thought would appeal to Laird as a foreman who had led Smoke-jumpers to fires: Dodge would not light his fire in a depression where his men could not see him. His men were behind him and were evidently just coming out of the edge of the timber when he lit his match. Sallee is undoubtedly right in insisting that the origin of Dodge’s fire has to be located where from the crevice above he could see Dodge lie down in it, because he saw him. But the seeing argument works both ways—Dodge’s fire also has to be located where, from behind him, Dodge’s crew could see him light it.

  Laird was late getting back to work. The days were turning hot and dry. Then came the lightning storms and the fires that show up by next morning. So it was a long time before he and I got together again, although I know he was happy in the meantime. He had been ejected from his desk chair in the Regional Office in Missoula to be foreman of an emergency crew on a big fire on Scapegoat Mountain.

  At our next lunch together I told Laird, “I’ve been thinking over what you said about Reba’s and Sylvia’s crosses having to be upgulch from Dodge’s fire, and now I know how we should go about checking on the location of the escape fire when we go back into Mann Gulch next summer.”

  “Fine,” Laird replied, “and I’ve a better plan for going into the gulch than any we’ve used before. I think it will be easier,” meaning without saying so that he thought it would be easier for me.

  Actually we were starting again a long way from where we had left off. In the interval each had gone on with his thinking about our problems and was assuming that the other shared his new conclusions. We both were starting again on the assumption we were going back to Mann Gulch next summer, although we had not parted with any such agreement, and the fact is that both of us had hoped our trip into Mann Gulch in 1978 with the survivors would be our last one. For us, a trip to Mann Gulch meant about 150 miles over the Continental Divide dragging a boat with a motor that might not work. After that came the 76 percent slope having no shade but lots of rocks cracking apart with heat and rattling with snakes. Yet we began by discussing Laird’s new way of going back into Mann Gulch.

  “I am thinking,” he said, “that this time we should come in the back way, over the head of the gulch from Willow Creek where there used to be a kind of a road. If I can get my truck nearly to the top of the divide between Willow Creek and Mann Gulch, then a lot of the climbing will have been done for us and we can sidehill from the head of the gulch down to the crosses.”

  “Sounds fine,” I said, and talked as if we were already on our way back. And with some dehydrating alterations, this is the way we went when the time came.

  WHILE LAIRD HAD BEEN CONSTRUCTING a more efficient way to reach Mann Gulch, I had been working on a fresh method to locate the origin of Dodge’s fire when we got there. Until it was located, I would have no common point from which to measure times and distances converging and diverging. The origin of the escape fire was the one place on the ground that they all touched at the end.

  It is possible to retrace some of the steps in thought that led us to Dodges fire. Of all objections Laird and I had to locating the origin of Dodge’s fire at the base of the highest standing tree, the one most convincing to me was that it would mean the men whose crosses are lowest on the hillside were a long way behind Dodge when they died. I didn’t believe this and was soon asking myself how I could find solid evidence against it. I thought again about the location of the crosses, because the location of the crosses is as close to certainty as anything on that ambiguous mountain. The crosses were placed where the bodies were found, and Jansson himself left a pile of rocks with a note underneath identifying each body and recording how the identification was made. Probably only the location of Hellman’s concrete cross is far wrong, but then Hellman died in the hospital and there was no pile of rocks with a note underneath to mark where his cross should be placed.

  This line of thought soon leads to the question, Which of all these crosses is most reliably located? and the answer to this one depends entirely upon remembering the testimony about the fire. So that the answer can be visualized from the photograph of Reba’s cross, the answer is Sylvia’s cross, which stands next to a big flat rock about two hundred yards straight uphill from Reba’s cross and slightly outside the left border of the photograph.

  Certainty requires such a rock beside Sylvia’s cross. Sallee remained somewhat in doubt about his own location of the origin of Dodge’s fire because there is no big flat rock close enough to it to be the rock where Sylvia was found, and Sallee is the one who should best remember the rock. Exhausted as he must have been, he kept going all the night of the fire until he led the rescue team first back to Hellman and then across the divide to Sylvia tottering on that flat rock, pleading, “Don’t look at my face. It’s awful.”

  The process of thinking for some may run smoothly, but mine, insofar as it is observable to me, is more like one of those little mud geysers in Yellowstone Park, alternating between bubbles of mud and a puff of smoke (and mud again). I puffed smoke as I concentrated on Sylvia’s cross, and when the smoke had cleared away, Sylvia’s cross had connected in thought with what I had long been trying to find—Dodge’s fire. In bubbles had come the memory of Dodge’s testimony about his actions after the main fire had passed him by—he had stood up in the ashes of his own fire; had heard a voice that seemingly was a long way off but turned out to be only a short distance upgulch and below him; and following it, had found Sylvia, whose body was so badly burned Dodge had placed him on a big flat rock out of the ashes. Dodge’s memory was
very precise, including his estimate of the distance between where he had been lying in his own fire and where he had found Sylvia: “Upon investigation, I found Sylvia approximately 100 feet below and 150 to 200 feet to the east of my location.”

  So, after Laird had finished his colorful description of our coming entrance into Mann Gulch riding in a chariot with four-wheel drive, I said, “And, when we get there, let’s head straight for Sylvia’s cross, and be sure we have a 100-yard tape measure with us. Since we’ll be starting from Sylvia’s cross to find where Dodge stood up in his fire,” I told Laird, “we’ll be doing Dodge’s estimated distances backwards—first 100 feet upslope from Sylvia’s cross, then 150 to 200 feet to the left toward the mouth of the gulch.”

  Robinson said, “A marker might be there.”

  I said, “It could be, but may be no longer.”

  We both knew, of course, that concrete crosses had been placed to mark the dead, but we also knew that initially, a few days after the fire, temporary wooden crosses had been erected and that the origin of the escape fire had also been marked. Its location almost certainly would have been accurate. Dodge returned to the scene of the fire the afternoon after it had passed by and remained there until all the bodies were found. Part of this time he spent in showing Jansson the place where he had lit his fire, which was then marked with a pile of rocks and a wooden cross. Laird and I assumed that this wooden cross had long ago disappeared, and certainly it was nowhere to be seen when we walked along the slope with Rumsey and Sallee.

  “But if the cross is still there,” Laird said, “it would be sure proof.”