Forest Circus
by John Yohe
The second week of July, the Asbestos National Forest actually got a few fires from dry lightning. Dispatch called over the radio about a reported burning tree fifteen miles to the northwest up in the foothills of the Northern Coast Range. Jim, our engine captain, took Cat and me out in the district engine. He didn’t look happy. He’d worked a bartending shift at the Timberline the night before—to earn some extra money for his child support payments is what he told me. He also might not have been happy to go out with us instead of his regular crew—Cat and I were actually on the hotshot hand crew and missed a dispatch two days earlier because we’d been up in Chico privately celebrating the crew’s return to California after about two months in New Mexico and Alaska. We were both from out of state and hadn’t had time to get pagers but had been told we’d have two days off. We had checked in with our supervisors the night before. Then, they left Stony Creek at five in the morning for Nevada with Jim’s firefighters as our substitutes.
We headed up out of the Stony Creek Valley into the woods north of Snake Mountain at the northernmost part of our district, where we were supposed to hook up with an engine from the Corvallis district but ended up driving around on dirt roads all morning by ourselves talking to them on the tac channel. Cat eventually spotted the smoke downhill from us and Jim pulled to the side. After checking the forest map he called in a tentative location and directions to Dispatch. The other crew called to say that they were on the road below us in the canyon and that they’d hike up to it. Jim stayed with the engine—he said—to maintain radio communications and sent us down with hand tools and a five-gallon bladder bag each.
Our forest was between the Sacramento Valley and the Pacific. We were on the eastern side in the ponderosa pines and Doug firs, though the forest wasn’t thick on that slope—we walked right down following the smoke smell over grass and needle cast. For two months, we’d been on fires tens of thousands of acres huge—this one was about an acre. Not spreading fast but with a huge ponderosa pine burning at the top right in the middle—the lightning strike. The other engine crew had already arrived just sitting off to the side in the green joking around waiting for a faller to come and cut down the pondo before they felt safe enough to work. So, Cat and I sat down too. Their attention immediately shifted to Cat, asking her questions about anything they could, completely ignoring me. I looked at the snag—thick and though burning at the top not catfaced—not like the top was going to fall out of it. Any one of the sawyers on our hotshot crew would have cut it in a second. But, I didn’t complain. I was getting paid overtime and hazard pay and out in the woods on a fire.
After waiting around a bit, Cat went off into the trees to piss but came running back. “Um, guys? There’s a spot just uphill from us.”
The engine captain Marski, an older beefy-looking guy, got up to check, but we all followed. The ‘spot’ turned out to be another acre, more active than the bottom one, with actual flames on the uphill side, and another burning tree throwing out embers into the green, the wind suddenly getting stronger. He called over the radio for a helicopter and a hand crew. Cat and I raised our eyebrows at each other. I said, “Safety zone downhill if things go to shit?”
“Copy that.”
But we got to work lining it. The wind picked up even more, trees torching, blowing more embers across the line. The two fires joined to four acres, and the other engine crew panicked. Their sawyer tried yelling orders, saying we had to fall back and cut more line, but Marski (to his credit) kept cool and told us to hold our position off to one side with one foot in the black.
Suddenly and quickly, an eight-person California Department of Fire helitack crew appeared, I don’t know from where—I hadn’t heard a helicopter or anything on the radio. They didn’t even talk to us, just proceeded to line a freeway around the whole area with their MacLeods and, as quickly as they came, left. One of our hotshot squad bosses usually called the CDF guys (the Chicken Defense Fund or the California Dumb Fucks), but they were way more efficient than us Forest Circus folks though Marksi had wanted them for bucket support—that is, water—with the helicopter. The wind did die back down with the sun going behind the mountains and Marski radioed Dispatch and called the fire contained, though we still had open flames and the two burning trees.
The special expert faller dude finally showed up to take care of the snag: big feet big nose and big gut with red suspenders and pants cut off at the knees. Chaw drooling out the side of his mouth. The bar on his chainsaw was almost as long as some of the guys on our crew were tall.
We backed up, and he went to work firing up the saw and slicing in the front pie cut. Before he’d even pulled the blade out, a huge piece of bark broke off above and fell on him. He dropped his saw and fell over. Cat, Marski, and I ran out to see if he was ok. He just sat up and grinned. “Huh, somebody told me about them widermakers. Never knew I’d ever see one.”
Cat and I made eye contact again raising our eyebrows, but we backed off to watch him hopefully finish.
He did finish a perfect pie cut in front and moved the blade behind to cut a nice level back cut—the tree top tilted as he was still cutting, and we all yelled to warn him. He backed off ok, and the snag landed downhill with a huge WHUMP in the fire, bouncing once and sending ash and branches up into the air. I walked out to help him swamp for the bucking and limbing, but without even saying anything he sheathed his saw and left loping up the hill like a bear right past the other burning snag.
Cat spread her hands and shook her head. “What the fuck?”
“I guess he got his hazard pay for the day.”
The handcrew turned out to be a California Department of Corrections convict crew. Again, nothing on the radio, just twenty convicts in red jumpsuits with their two CDC guards walking down the hill and immediately going to work mopping up without talking to anybody. We stayed away on our top part of the fire, but I had to get my bladder bag, so I came down above a bunch of them working on the fallen snag. Their sawyer was sectioning it off into huge rounds, one of which got away from the poor swamper trying to hold it and rolled right at another group of guys working below. I yelled. They looked up, eyes wide, and barely got out of the way. The round vanished into the forest, bouncing and crashing, hitting trees down the hill for quite a while. I had this mental picture of some campground down in the canyon with families sitting around fires, making smores, singing Jesus songs, and then this big ol’ round, shooting out of the trees, hitting the side of some unfortunate mini-van.
The cons stayed another hour until it got really dark, then they also pulled a French exit. Marski called Dispatch to say that his crew, as well as Cat and I, were going to sit on the fire overnight to watch the second snag and continue mop-up. Fine with me. More overtime. Ch-ching!
We made a bonepile of burning logs and branches around the base of the second pondo to encourage it to burn all the way thru and fall on its own. Then, we all hunkered down and ate MREs—meals ready to excrete—making warming fires and kicking back. Cat and I sat next to each other in the green with our backs against a log, watching the orange glow. She looked at me and whispered, “Are we really stopping now?”
I shrugged. “I guess so?”
Our hotshot supervisor would have had us up until midnight mopping and bonepiling. Still, even though we went to sleep off the clock—officially kind of early around 22:00—I didn’t sleep very well with only a space blanket and everyone coughing and farting. Cat didn’t look like she slept well either. In the middle of the night, the second snag finally burned through at the base with a CRACK and fell over downhill THUMPing onto the ground. scaring the shit out of everybody.
In the morning, most of the fire was dead, which made me wonder about the ‘mop til you drop’ hotshot style of firefighting. Why bother mopping if the fire will just go out overnight anyway? But we chased down the last duffers smoking up. All of us moving slowly and groggily. By 11:00, Marski called the fire officially controlled and released Cat and me. We hiked back uphill, covered in ash and dirt. Jim had spent the night up in the engine—I hadn’t heard him on the radio at all, and he looked much better rested than either of us.
BIO: Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe has worked as a wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. Best of the Net nominee x2. Notable Essay List for Best American Essays 2021, 2022 and 2023. @thejohnyohe www.johnyohe.weebly.com.