Fairbanks. It happened on a burnout, and when you burnout a fireline, you always burn from the top of a hill to its bottom for the same reason that you always burn against the wind, so that you can control your fire. On this fire our fireline crossed a draw, so I took a drip torch filled with gas and diesel across to the other side. I would burn from the opposite side down and our two burnouts would meet in the belly of the draw. I walked the fireline because it is much easier to walk on a cleared trail than through bushes and shrubs, which is why the moose and her calf were walking the same fireline. One thing about black bears and moose. A black bear can be reckoned with (Grizzlies are a different thing), but a cow moose cannot, especially if that cow moose has her calf and you happen to show up unexpectedly in her trail. An eye blink before they saw me, I saw them, actually I only saw her at first, the cow, big as a Buick and looking like she had already had a bad day. Primal instinct is an amazing thing. Her instinct triggered a protection mechanism and she charged; my instinct was even more primal—abject fear. I ran toward the fire, the drip torch held behind me, ignited fuel dripping from its wick. Moose have heads like anvils, nothing stops them as they ram trees you have to run around. Luckily, though, I lit off a large enough area of fire that the moose decided I was no longer a threat to her calf; unluckily, I had trapped myself between my own burnout and an active flame front. Just like with a bear, though, you would rather deal with a moving fire than a mad moose. My daughter has always liked that story, for it has danger and fire and familial love. This one was a favorite of my daughter’s when she used to ask me to tell her a bedtime story. We were on a fire near Lake Chelan, Washington, and the fire was controlled and all but out. We were walking through the ash of the fire looking for smokes, bending down to look over the land for hovering insects, sign of a hot spot. Herb and I found a stump hole, hot like an oven as we dug it out following the tap root down and the spider web of lateral roots. Herb used his Pulaski to grub and I used my shovel to dig, and we took turns working alternately at the hole and at the material we excavated. I stopped Herb while he was deep in the hole, searching for the end of a heated root, and pointed up the slope at a squirrel stumbling drunkenly down the ruined scape. We watched it for a few moments as it limped toward us, unaware of our presence, tripping over twigs and falling into small holes and running head first into larger obstacles, heatcracked rocks and remnant pieces of partially burned logs. As it neared, we could see that its hide was patchy, as though
from scabies, and that a full crust of ashes covered its face. Its mouth was open, and while we could not hear its breathing, I could imagine how parched each breath must have been. It limped on its left forepaw, stopping occasionally to hold that paw in the air like a dog holding up a wounded leg, bent at the wrist and paw hanging almost limp. We did not say anything, at least I do not remember us saying anything. Herb stood and we left our tools by the stump hole and walked the few paces to the squirrel. It stopped, maybe sensing a movement, but did not run. I bent, and with gloved hands, cradled the squirrel in my hands. It lay there, like a babe in the crook of her mother’s arm, either waiting or resigned to its coming fate. We walked to the fireline and crossed to the green. Herb unscrewed a bottle of water and began washing its face, at first rubbing the water gently over the eyes and nose to remove the crust of ash and soon just showering the animal. At moments like that, you feel tempted to apply the pathetic fallacy and say that the squirrel looked up into your eyes with thanks in his. My daughter used to like it when I would say that. In reality, though, the squirrel did look at us, but then jumped from my hands and scurried, still with a limp, into the safety of a tree. Herb and I went back to our stump hole. That’s a good one, and sometimes still my sixteen-year-old daughter will ask me to tell it to her. Other memories remain fixed with the furrow of a question. One was on that same fire near Lake Chelan. It was several days earlier during our first shift on the fire. We were the first crew there and the fire was running, occasionally climbing into the crowns for a quick run along the side of the ridge. We had abandoned four lines, the fire erupting and forcing us from the ridge, and day was inching toward darkness. I was on a chainsaw in front of the crew when the fire blew up again. We ran. I cold not make it down to where the crew was and to the safety zone at the bottom of the hill, so I ran for a rock slide we had planned on tying our line into. At the bottom of the rock slide, curled and rattling its beads, was a rattlesnake. In times like that, you are not picky about with whom or what you share a sanctuary. I ran past the snake, hid my saw as best I could under my chaps and wiggled down between some rocks to watch the fire pass by. Some people liken the sound of an approaching fire to a locomotive, but I remember thinking how it sounded like a waterfall. At first distant and as it neared, in the way that you near a waterfall, the sound increased and the tone lowered until soon all other sound was eclipsed by its deep and almost guttural roar. And then it was gone, leaving me in a snow shower of embers. 57