It looked like the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. We smoke jumpers stood in the open doorway of the Forest Service DC-3 aircraft and watched the mountain erupt in flame. Fire engulfed an entire lake basin. Tree crowns exploded as the blaze leapt mountainsides. Whirling globes of orange flame spun out of surges of thick ocher smoke. Behind the smoke, an orange moon was rising, and the moon turned red as we dropped toward the fire.
My heart climbed into my throat. I had rarely seen anything so powerful, so beautiful. I turned away from Leo Cromwell, my jump partner that evening, and looked up through the plane. Ten other smoke jumpers pressed their faces to the windows. Their eyes reflected the sight below us and the anxiety we all felt. How wild will the winds be? How hot will the fire be? How will we get out if events turn bad?
We orbited the fire, checking the winds and our parachutes as we got ready to jump. Spotter Rick Hudson pulled his head in from the doorway.
"You've got a lot of drift!" he yelled into Leo's ear. "But the jump spot looks good. I'll carry you two ridges upwind and let you ride!"
Rick looked at the other jumpers and then back to Leo.
"You'll be the drift steamer, Leo," Rick said. "If it's no good for you, we won't drop anyone else."
"Fine," Leo said, and smiled. "Clay's going with me."
"We know where to go to stay warm," I said. The fire had just doubled in size.
The pilots brought the plane around and straightened on a final approach. Leo grabbed the sides of the doorway and crouched, ready to leap. Over Leo's helmet I watched the Idaho horizon, snowy and jagged. I lowered my helmet's steel face mask.
Leo launched himself from the plane. The slipstream slapped him, and he vanished aft. I waited one count, stepped into the doorway, and leapt into the hundred-knot blast.
* * *
When I consider my life as a wildlands fire fighter, I think of the first pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
"Call me Ishmael," the narrator tells us. "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul … and it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
Ishmael shipped out as a whaler and slipped the bonds of civilization. Working outdoors, using brain and muscle and struggling with nature as he tested himself, Ishmael gained relief from the drudgery of the city and its demands on his native exuberance. Historically, other jobs have offered an escape to adventure and freedom--I can think of cowboy, fisherman, trapper,
...
Read Full Article
|
