by Kyle Dickman
Honig was pleased to have a chance to shoot such an active fire. She sat in the passenger seat beside Clayton, who had parked at the preserve’s entrance, where he was directing incoming resources to their assignments. From across the meadow, Honig snapped photos of the fire lighting the sky like a distant city. Clayton wasn’t paying attention to her. He was leaning out the window, briefing one of the many resources rushing to the fire. Day had ordered 1,092 firefighters to be on scene in the next few days, and the influx of men and machines had been more or less continuous that night.
“There’s a bunch of little marshes and shit out there,” Clayton said to one engine captain. “So it’s not a good idea to drive the engine off the road.”
Clay, who was balding, with a thick handlebar mustache, sent the captain and his engine rumbling down the road toward an old sheep corral, then popped his truck into gear and followed the emergency lights toward the flames.
“Here we go,” he said to Honig. “Now, let’s see about getting you some good pictures, then.”
Crews had started the firing operation on the east side of the caldera, and the burnout was moving back toward the wildfire in the west. As they moved along the fire’s edge, Clayton stopped often to check in with firefighters spread out along the road.
The conversation consisted mostly of Clayton deflecting requests for additional resources and more water. The firefighters were stretched uncomfortably thin, and though the burnout was holding, Clayton and everybody else in Division Zulu was aware that one strong gust of wind could change everything.
While he worked, Clayton did what he could to help Honig get good photos. At one point, the fire intensity picked up in the meadow, and he led her on foot toward the fire’s edge to get close-ups. Then the breeze shifted, and both hustled back to the truck through blowing smoke. “You doing okay?” Clayton yelled to her. She couldn’t see much beyond the glow stick that Clay had attached to his helmet—a safety precaution he and the other hotshots had taken to make themselves more visible. But yes, Honig said, she was doing just fine.
When they met up with Granite Mountain, Grant and Bob were still burning out. Clayton called Bunch and Turbyfill over and asked them to pose for a few pictures.
“You’re not with the news, are you?” Bunch asked Honig, bristling a little at the sight of a camera. “ ’Cause we had a lady once who followed us around for days.” Then he mumbled, “It got a little weird.”
“What’s that?” Honig hadn’t heard him.
“It got a little weird,” he said, this time clearly, if not too loudly. “She was at spike camp and stuff.”
“Yeah?” Honig asked. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this comment, and Clayton recognized the awkwardness and politely stepped in to explain who Honig was, what she was doing, and why Granite Mountain was happy to help. But what struck her more than Bunch’s odd story about the other photographer was the hotshots’ utter lack of concern. The wildfire was feet away from the men, the house, and its 250-gallon propane tank, and the entire forest was glowing as if lit by floodlights, but as they worked, the hotshots’ primary concern seemed to be tobacco. They called it bung.
“Turby, you want some bung?” Bunch yelled to him. The normalcy of their conversation put Honig at ease. She asked Turby to pose near the cabin, framing a shot of the big ex-Marine silhouetted by the fire. Clayton looked over her shoulder.
“Well, I wanted to be your main subject,” Clayton told her, his voice hushed and fringed with western twang. She laughed.
“But I don’t have no gloves on,” he said.
He was referencing a Fire Service edict that no photos or video are to be shared unless all rules—even those often broken, like wearing gloves—are being followed in the images. Honig liked Clayton immediately.
At twenty-seven, Clayton was in general either unconcerned or unaware of what people thought of him. That quirky confidence was part of his charm. He’d made a hobby of thrift-store shopping and used Granite Mountain’s station, where he worked all year as one of the hotshots’ six permanent crew members, as a gallery for his collection of useless kitsch: a strip of Halloween paper skeletons, a stitched velvet picture of Jesus, an antique chainsaw. Naturally easygoing, Clayton tried not to take firefighting—or life—too seriously. Years earlier, during a nighttime burning operation similar to the one on Thompson Ridge, a friend of his had spent his birthday on the fire line. Clayton, who was working on the other side of a lake, grabbed a drip torch and burned his friend’s initials—W.W.—into the side of a mountain. W.W. could see it from a half-mile away.
Honig and Clayton spent the night working together. By morning, she needed to return home to Los Alamos but found that she didn’t want to go. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she was enjoying herself. By dawn it was clear that the operation had been a success. The burnout on Division Zulu had blackened the fuel around the cabin. No homes had been lost, and now, with cooler nighttime temperatures and higher humidity, the fire gathered itself in the heavier logs strewn across the forest floor. It wouldn’t become dangerous again until the day got hot, that afternoon. The day shift could deal with the fire’s reawakening. For now, the firefighters on Division Zulu could pause.
Clayton parked the truck facing east, and he and Honig sat in the cab watching the sunrise through the low smoke that hung above the caldera like morning fog. Elk herds with young calves grazed in the forest just beyond the creeping flames, and coyotes and bears sporadically passed through the meadow. A few days later, firefighters would rescue a burned cub and give it the name Redondo. As they sat in the cab, Clayton handed Honig his iPod and asked her to pick out the music.
“Much of it is my wife’s,” he said, adding, “She’s a second-grade teacher.”
“Whatever I pick, you’re going to hate,” Honig warned. She only listened to country and Christian music, and few firefighters she knew listened to country, and even fewer to Christian. But she scrolled past his archival selection of Tupac albums and recognized in the hip-hop collection Casting Crowns, a Christian rock band.
“I love ‘Set Me Free,’ ” she said, a little self-consciously. It was one of Casting Crowns’ more popular songs.
“Me, too,” Clayton said. In a field as rough as firefighting, conversations about church and faith are rare.
Clayton told Honig that the job actually brought him closer to Christ. Six years earlier, he was working with the Prescott Hotshots when his mom died of a brain tumor—a similar illness to the one that had stricken Chris MacKenzie’s mom while Granite Mountain was on the Hart Fire that week. As Chris had done, Clayton left the Prescott Hotshots in the midst of fire season to help take care of his mom. During her sickness, he became a youth pastor at the Heights Church, and she died in 2008, a year after getting sick. Clayton returned to the fire line the following spring.
He found that hotshotting and ministry work had their similarities. Both attracted followers who were young and drifting. Firefighting, though, was his calling, Clayton said. That was part of the reason he’d come back to the line. It gave him an opportunity to share his faith in a subtle way.
Before he dropped Honig off at her car, she told him that her father had recently died of cancer. His decline had taken the better part of a decade.
“Do you think it’s easier for the family if the death is long and drawn-out?” Honig asked, and she looked at Clayton, his face streaked with ash nearly as dark as his mustache. “Or is it easier if a loved one goes quickly?”
—
Every season, there’s one particular fire that teaches rookies what it means to be a hotshot—why the job is so self-selecting, why hazing exists, why the physical training is so demanding. Enduring these fires gives most young hotshots an unassailable pride. The intensity of the experience also breeds a shared mindset: If you’ve been there, you understand the commitment the job demands; if you haven’t, it’s something that’s difficult to fathom. As hard as these fires are, they also forge friendshi
ps. For Grant and Renan, their test was Thompson Ridge.
After the third night shift and their seventh day since leaving Prescott, the battle buddies waited by a barn in the caldera’s meadow for a displeasing breakfast of dehydrated eggs. For the first time in days, they were far enough from the other hotshots that they had space to speak openly.
“How you doing, man?” Renan asked Grant.
“I’m struggling,” he said.
Grant was tired of being watched and judged; tired of the grime, the smoke, the bad food, the lack of sleep. Just tired. The work was mostly burning and holding, not particularly hard, as hotshotting goes, but since the first night shift, Donut was the only person on the crew who had slept much or well. He’d brought Tylenol PM and had the foresight to take a healthy dose before lying down. The rest of the crew suffered. They slept in a campground a fifteen-minute drive from their section of line, and during the day temperatures often climbed into the nineties. For most of the eight hours Grant and Renan were supposed to be sleeping, they lay on their mats swatting flies and sweating. By 5 P.M., when Granite Mountain reported to fire camp for their night shift, they’d slept for three hours, maybe four.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about home,” Grant said. “About Leah.” The last time he’d talked to her was after his spat with Tony on the Hart Fire, and the work—and his loneliness—had only gotten harder since then. He told Renan how he’d fallen for Leah.
Four days after they’d first met, Grant called and asked Leah if she wanted to go to the beach. She’d never been.
“When?” she asked.
“Now,” he said.
Eight hours later, they were in Newport Beach, California. Grant and Leah met Bob, his cousin, at their grandmother’s house, and immediately after, the trio went to a restaurant at the end of the Santa Monica Pier, then to Venice Beach and to Hollywood.
Later that night, Grant led them to the empty Disneyland parking lot. It was late night by now, and he parked between streetlights and put on a hip-hop album that Bob had bought from a musician on the street that morning. Grant and Leah held hands in the front seat, Bob drank canned Coors beer and got funnier in the backseat, and all three of them watched the Happiest Place on Earth glow in the darkness.
“You’re coming to our wedding,” Grant said to Renan in the meadow. He plucked a blade of grass and folded and tore it into neat strips. Grant had known Bob his whole life, but his cousin had other responsibilities on the line. Renan understood what Grant was going through better than anybody else.
Renan felt the same. They were partners who literally spent every waking moment together. As battle buddies they had to. They also wanted to. The newness of the fire line made them crave a companion to share and contextualize the experiences. That morning, Renan told Grant about his girlfriend and the ring he’d bought six months earlier. He wasn’t going to give it to her until he had a structural firefighting job and enough money to pay for the wedding.
“You and Leah will be there when that happens,” Renan said.
Scott walked up, and the rookies put their conversation on hold. He lingered long enough that Grant volunteered, “I’m feeling it, dude. I’m worn out, I’m missing home—my dog, my girl.”
“Oh, little rookie’s missing his girl?” Scott asked. Renan prepared for the belittling and inevitable jokes that often pass for conversation among young men. But they didn’t come. Scott realized that now wasn’t the time. He changed tack.
“It’s your first fire. Everybody wonders what the hell it is they’re doing out here,” Scott said. “That’s normal. It’s a phase, though.”
Scott had plenty of slow moments on Thompson Ridge in which to worry about the puppy and unpaid bills, fantasize of past lovers, create and dispel fears of losing Heather again. He also thought about his sister. She was due any day. He wanted to be there for his nephew’s birth.
“It gets easier,” Scott said to Grant, perhaps with more conviction than he felt.
“Do you remember your first hard shift on a fire?” Grant asked.
“Oh, man, of course I do,” Scott said. But he didn’t tell them about it. Instead he just offered some simple advice. “There will always be times when you get sick of this shit. Having somebody at home makes it harder. It makes it feel like you’re never fully here,” he said, squeezing Grant’s shoulder. “Just grit your teeth and you’ll get through it.”
They could see a couple of green Forest Service pickups bouncing down the road toward the barn, dust billowing behind them.
“You’re doing good, dude,” Scott said.
When the trucks pulled up next to the barn, the men unloaded white buckets filled with hot plates of breakfast. Grant, Renan, and Scott lined up along with the other crews spooling out from the folding tables and rejoined the world they’d momentarily left. After breakfast, fed and exhausted, the men in Alpha buggy returned to the campsites in silence. There was no music, and each spent the short drive alone with his thoughts. Whatever euphoria had driven Bunch, Zup, and Parker to momentary madness had evaporated, and a deep fatigue now loomed over the crew like a great collective hangover.
After unloading the other hotshots’ bags, as they always did, Renan and Grant slept next to each other. They unrolled their pads and sleeping bags in the shade of a pine that great age had given character. Grant neatly stacked and folded his ash-covered pants and shirt beside his bed. Renan sighed when he took off his boots and sat for a long moment rubbing his naked and shriveled feet. Colonies of athlete’s foot were now well established in his toes, and above his sock line was a white ring that separated the dirt above his calf from the damp white flesh below. His body ached. Letting his feet breathe was a small luxury.
As the other hotshots collapsed into their bags, Grant pulled out the tobacco he’d bought and took a seat on a picnic table nearby. Finally alone, he rolled a cigarette. Since the gas station, smoking had become his quiet ritual—a small creature comfort before bed. Watching Grant smoke was the last thing Renan remembered before falling asleep.
—
Renan woke with a sharp inhale. He knew this feeling. He hated this feeling. His back was seizing. Renan grabbed Grant, who was asleep beside him, and pulled him closer. Grant was slow to wake and turned to see Renan’s eyes wide with panic as he slipped from consciousness. Renan began to writhe. Grant, now aware that something was very wrong, put his face close to Renan’s and screamed.
“Renan! Renan!”
His shout roused the rest of the hotshots. Somebody called an ambulance. Grant was kneeling over Renan when he regained consciousness. Renan saw only his friend’s face hovering six inches above his own. Grant kept repeating Renan’s name, and it sounded hollow and meaningless, but even through the lens of shock, he could tell Grant was terrified.
Renan’s body convulsed and blackness returned. Grant put a hand on his friend’s forehead and the other on his arm, and the tears streamed down as he felt Renan arch and quiver and arch and quiver. The entire crew surrounded Renan in a wide circle. Most were shirtless and in their boxers, trading guesses in hushed tones about what was happening to Renan and ideas about how to keep him safe.
When consciousness returned, it came in pieces. Hearing was first. Renan didn’t know who was speaking or what they were saying. The paramedics, who arrived within twenty minutes, loaded him onto a gurney and spread a wool blanket over him. The hotshots parted as he was wheeled to the ambulance. The first thing Renan remembered clearly was Grant and Donut framed by the ambulance’s side door.
Grant was crying. Donut had been. He grabbed Renan’s motionless hand and squeezed.
“You’re going to be okay, man,” Donut said. “We’re here for you.”
Tears welled in Renan’s eyes. He knew he wasn’t coming back to the crew. The paramedics closed the back door and said it was time to go. Grant looked down and tried to find the right words to reassure his friend but failed. The door was shut and Grant, Donut, and the rest of the crew watched t
he ambulance pull away.
CHAPTER 12
WE’RE STILL HERE
Tragedies both large and small punctuate the history of America’s long war on wildfire. In 1871, fifteen hundred people died in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a logging town near Lake Michigan, when, according to legend, a flaming front five miles wide and twice as tall as the Washington Monument swept through town. That same day, five hundred more people died in two separate large fires in Michigan and Illinois. By the end of the nineteenth century, wildfires would kill 836 more Americans, most of them civilians.
But for all the casualties, no tragedy has shaped America’s fire policy more than Idaho’s Big Burn. The same historic firestorm that made Ed Pulaski famous for saving forty-five of his crew members’ lives went on to kill eighty-seven people and blacken three million acres. Far from America’s largest or deadliest blaze, the Big Burn’s significance lay in its timing.
The fire sparked in August 1910, just five years after Theodore Roosevelt created the Forest Service and placed under the new agency’s control an area twice the size of Montana. The conservative Congress, many of its members deep in the pockets of timber barons, was incensed. Roosevelt had used an executive action to bring millions of previously unclaimed acres under federal control, and he did so, in his typically willful style, without consulting Congress.
Congress, which sets the annual budgets for federal agencies, responded to Roosevelt’s brash action by giving the Forest Service an anemic and unsustainable budget. Two of the agency’s early directors resigned in protest of their low salaries, but it was even worse for the rangers, who received only $900 per year and were required to provide their own horses and saddles.
If the Forest Service was going to survive beyond its infancy, the agency and its charismatic first director, Gifford Pinchot, needed more rangers and more money to manage the land. They needed to move beyond the political battles and convince Congress that their relevance was greater than merely being caretakers of the wilderness. The key, once again, lay with the politicians beholden to the timber industry, which saw every blackened tree as a lost dollar. Pinchot and the leaders of the Forest Service quickly realized that controlling wildfires would become the agency’s way to secure sufficient funding.