Drift Smoke: Loss and Renewal in a Land of Fire

4. Winter Feed | Loss of Livelihood

Two facts concerning the fighting of prairie fires that all the xit hands seem to agree on are that everyone pitched in to put out a fire, whether it was on his property or not, and that fighting was hard work and made a hand hungrier than almost any other activity. —Cordia Sloan Duke and Joe B. Frantz, 6,000 Miles of Fence Fire can and does destroy the resources of the Public Domain. The Bureau of Land Management must be constantly on the alert for this destructive agent. Range and forest fire suppression on lands under the jurisdiction of this office will be given priority over all other Bureau activities, except the safeguarding of human life. —1961 Fire Plan for the Prineville Grazing District Whereas loss of fire and loss of life are objectively present in smoke-free horizons and granite crosses on windblown ridges, other losses are more “perspectival.” They are losses every bit as much as those smoldering in the first two cairns, but they are losses that depend on one’s perspective, what one values— whether resources for one’s livelihood, a piece of the land that shapes one’s identity, or both. For some, these values may be in the shape of a yellow-bellied ponderosa; for others, in crunchyblond rangeland at the head of a box canyon. Nature is often indifferent to human survival. Likewise, those who applaud “nature ’s way” are sometimes indifferent to those parts of nature [ 81] 4 | w i nt e r fe e d | loss of livelihood that humans have come to depend on for their livelihoods. Questioning my own indifference began at the margin of a going fire. july 2 5, 1 994 Barely a week had passed since the Smith Canyon fire was controlled. And while the pain of Storm King Mountain still clouded the West, more thunderstorms boiled out of the south, scouring the Deschutes and John Day drainages with lightning and feathery virga, those wisps of rain that evaporate before hitting the ground. The North Sherman Fire Department, in Wasco, requested mutual aid for a fast-moving fire burning near the mouth of the John Day River, just south of where it dumps into the Columbia. By midafternoon I was sitting in the cab of Sam Miller’s pickup looking down on a terrestrial contrail of fire that stretched all the way from the rim of the canyon to the river five hundred feet below. Sam poured a scalding-hot cup of coffee for himself, and we talked strategy: direct or indirect (that is, up close with a wet gunnysack or shovel, or at a distance setting a backfire), how to deploy the few people we had on hand, and whether air support (like helicopters or retardant planes) was available. In farming and ranching communities across the West, fires like this one are as much social events as impending disasters. In a world where we increasingly hire professionals to do the jobs we’re either too lazy to do or don’t know how to do, it’s refreshd ri ft s mo ke [ 82] ing to see people fend for themselves. At times this devolves into chaos on the fireline, as communication breaks down and eight ranchers and a bartender become the Delta Force of Sherman County. Yet, up to a point, it’s hard to cast blame, even if luck has more to do with the outcome than anything. Typically, though, where urban areas sprawl like metastasized cancers into surrounding wildlands, people have neither the skill nor the inclination to fight fire in their own backyards, which—as I’m sure Kierkegaard would agree—is probably for the best. But in many rural communities to this day, when a fire breaks out, so too do the weedsprayers, shovels, and wet gunnysacks. And it doesn’t matter when or where the fire is burning. While my experience fighting fire in Sherman County was primarily one of male dominance at the margins of flames, wives and girlfriends would often drive out to the line delivering cardboard boxes of homemade sandwiches and milk jugs full of iced tea. It used to be that a prerequisite to fighting fire in these parts was a cooler of beer in the truck bed. Now, after years of haranguing by the feds and rural fire districts, most—though not all—coolers just hold pop or water...