Tarmac Teardrops, Wildland Fire, Packrats, and the Dipshits Among Us

Wildland Fire, Packrats, and the Dipshits Among Us: Part One

January 18, 2021 Klair Cooper

She’s asleep, praise the heavens. The toddler that has become the central fixture in my life has, finally, fallen asleep in the pack on my back. Her head is slightly bobbing against the sun shade, and I can hear nothing but her rhythmic breathing. Currently, it’s much softer than my own deep, raspy respirations. I’m halfway up the second-to-last grade of a hike her and I have made near weekly since she was born. It boasts a cool 700 feet of elevation gain in the first 0.6 miles, which has made this my favorite hiking or trail running escape over the past few years. Just enough grade to make you earn it, but still, attainable with 40 pounds of toddler on your back or at a decent clip on a jog.

Now that I’ve been blessed with an intermission to the sing-song repeat of “Wheels on the Bus” for at least an hour and a half, today’s hike will be extended. This hike just became Mom’s time, and before that realization even has time to cement, subconsciously Mom’s hiking differently now. She’s hiking the old way. Instead of the rapid foot fall and haggard breathing that accompanies the high-impact, time-trial style hiking that has become a new norm, my body has settled back into its old form. This form is more powerful, rhythmic, and meant for all day endurance. This form is so second nature for me, it’s meditation in motion: one foot in front of the other. The 40 pounds of weight on my back is now an accepted addition to my own body weight, as it was for so many summers of my life. Really, it’s not even there at all.

As my mind starts to fall further away, I see movement in the rocks near the crest of this false summit. It’s a small rodent of some kind, cruising over the lichen-covered, red rock. As I advance, it finds its way to the precipice of its domain and stands erect on its hind legs to monitor my movements: rock chuck, an unusually small one, actually, almost the size of a large rat. Rats, fuck rats. I fucking hate rats. There’s a long-forgotten memory: rats on rocks. I laugh to myself and grin a bit sarcastically.

I remember the day vividly, even now. It was late afternoon, almost a summer evening really, and it was August — dirty August — and she had played me a bit dirtier than most already just three days in. I was sitting in the lawn behind the air hangar that was our duty station in central Idaho. I was sharpening a Pulaski and casually looking at the foothills and the picturesque Beaverheads in the distance. This August was working up to be a dirty bitch. In the past five days, I had been dispatched to a national fire assignment with one of our helicopters and flown to Utah with high hopes of as much overtime and hazard pay as I could possibly squeeze out of a 14-day assignment, only to arrive, spend one day on assignment, and abruptly get sent back to our home district for “severity.” This was a nightmare. I had waited most of July to work my way up the “Off-Forest List” and had now blown probably my only opportunity for a 14-day roll before heading back to college in late August. I needed that money. I needed the 16-hour days. I needed the overtime, and I needed hazard pay. This is how I paid for school, and the more I made here, the fewer hours I spent working as a cocktail waitress in the offseason. Really, it was the only way I could afford tuition and living on my own.

Here I sat, at the bottom of the list to go out on a fire, sharpening a Pulaski, more abrasive and bitchier than even my already heaping dose at baseline. I’d been sitting here for hours sharpening tools and rehabbing equipment for others to use. The tones had gone off a number of times throughout the day. I guess that is the only silver lining. There had been a lightning burst that came through the river corridor a couple nights back, and we were starting to see some action. Honestly, we’d nearly cleared the base. There were four of us seasonals left and the usual heavy dose of overhead.

“Cooper, grab your shit!” Fuller booms as he tears out of the office door with an expo marker in hand. “You and Murray are on the next load. Put it on the L-4.”

He’s commanding and direct; he always is. He’s also the best. I watch, nearly dumbfounded as he writes “IC-Murray/ICT-Cooper” on the board. Fuck yes! I half jog the Pulaski back to the shed and then to my locker. I pull out my line gear, or fire pack, and start shoving the leftovers from my lunch in the largest pocket, along with my puffy: a thin down sweater that packs to almost nothing. I had learned the hard way, summers back, that August nights can be brutally cold on the Salmon-Challis. Now that my line gear has all the luxuries, I’m cinching it furiously down into its smallest state so I can fit it in my belly bag.

The belly bag is a super-hot term for a bag that hangs from the waist of your rappel harness during rappel operations. If things don’t go as planned, it’s all you have out there, and it has to weigh under 30 pounds. They only weigh under 30 pounds if you’re a god-damned fool. Every rappeler worth their salt knows to pad their flight weight heavy by at least an extra 10 pounds to buy yourself some weight in your belly bag if you happen to need it. That weight is gold: it’s water, it’s spare socks, a toothbrush. I see Murray in my peripheral halfway down the isle of lockers doing the same.

“Looks like it’s me and you again, Coop,” Murray says as I pass him on my way to the helicopter.

“What is this now, our third IA together this summer?” I ask, laughing over my shoulder without losing pace.

It’s bizarre actually, on a crew this large, nearly 40 people this year, to go on a fire with the same person, let along three in two months. Some seasons you never see the same person twice on a fire. Although, it has been a busy IA year, and me and Murray have pulled the lottery card on IA’s so far. IA is what we call Initial attack: the first couple of operational periods or days on a fire. This is what Helicopter Rappellers are here for: fast response to the most remote areas. IA is our bread and butter, it’s what we all came to do. I will take IA, especially in the river breaks, over large fire assignments any day — as long as there’s some hazard and OT involved.

With our belly bags and flight helmets in tow, we head for the helicopter: the L-4, or the “light” as we endearingly call her, 4-9-Lima-Bravo. I love this helicopter. “Three seasons now with this lovely,” I think as I load my gear and check the ropes, my harness, the brackets and descent devices. A second check to make sure the saw box and fire box are loaded and then, as we knew was coming, all the excitement hits the brick wall. Hurry up and wait; it’s all you can do. Now that we are waiting, I check my watch: 1738.

“Shit,” I say aloud as Murray and me walk back to the hangar.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“It’s nearly six. If it’s going to happen, better hope it happens fast, or we’ll be looking at tomorrow.”

We’ve been extended, as we always are in August, until 1930 for our duty hours tonight. We’ve got an hour, tops, to pop a fire if we want hazard and overtime today.

“Come on heat and wind,” Murray says, as he squints looking west towards the sun.

It’s August, and we still have some serious heat in our favor, even in the evenings this time of year. We can also count on the winds starting to change around 1800. Then, you’re just praying for a lookout with a particularly grand work ethic and an eagle eye.

“Come on, Joyce.,” I say under my breath.

Joyce is on Tin Cup Lookout this summer. She has been on that lookout for the past 20 years, and rumor holds she even raised a couple kids up there. Joyce is eccentric, and known to try and armchair quarterback a fire or two, but again, she’s the best. She also has the best spot. Tin Cup Lookout has the most uninterrupted view of the entire Salmon River corridor: the main and the middle fork are all her domain. Over the past few summers alone, I owe Joyce a lot. A guru of all things weather, fire, and wildlife related out here, she’s saved my ass a couple of times. She’s also a weird ass lady. I happen to like weird ass ladies.

I head back to the shed, pick up the Pulaski I had been working on, the bastard file, and my discarded “project work” gloves. I’m back on the lawn, in a cross-legged, head-down worship to the fire gods, and each lick of this file is like a prayer being sent up.

It happens. It actually fucking happens! The crack of the radio and the tones makes my head rip up like I’ve been hooked on a line. I’m staring at a black box on the wall, waiting, praying, that we’re on the list of resources being dispatched. There it is: Helicopter 409. Pulaski down, file down, gloves torn off, all left on the lawn, and we’re in a slow jog to the helicopter now. The pilot has beaten us there by a long way; he’s already spooling up.

I’m tearing my “man purse” out of my cargo pocket as I jog and furiously writing a lat./long. on any open page and simultaneously trying to memorize it as well: a habit borne out of a high school earth sciences class. Thanks, Mr. Temple. The spotter, Murray, and I are all pulling out our yellow fire shirts, our flight gloves, and our helmets. The rotors of the helicopter begin to whine as they gain more power. We look like a fucked brigade of synchronized swimmers. We’re in sync, we’re professional, and we’re methodical as fuck, but god, we’re a haggard band of society’s rejects also.

All three remaining doors on the helicopter close at nearly the same time as we get in. The two of us in the back are holding a thumbs up as we buckle our belts with one hand so we aren’t delayed by the time it will take to plug our helmets into the radio packs.

Then the lift, forceful and fast, faster than normal and staring at the tarmac falling away outside the window. It’s the first time I realize that MacDonald is the pilot today. Our normal pilot is on days off. MacDonald, the owner of the helicopter contracting company, is here as his relief for two days. He’s the old guard. He flies confidently, and it’s smooth, but he doesn’t mess around either.