As we stood on a hillside in
Idaho’s Boulder-White Cloud mountains watching a fire bear
down on us, I told my friend Dave that this was the closest I’d
been to a wildfire without getting paid for it.
We’d just
finished speed-hiking down from a high lake basin, after the Forest
Service told us to get out. The Valley Road Fire, we’d been
told, was growing too fast to guarantee the safety of backpackers.
I’m tempted to hum the tune to Gilligan’s
Island just now. Our three-day trip into my favorite
mountain range was going to be relaxed: We had dogs, we had wine,
we had good friends and great weather.
The other
temptation is to say that I sensed this fire was coming. Late on
the first night in the mountains I stepped out of my tent to look
at the stars and noticed that the air was completely still and
warm. Almost too warm, I thought. Then I crawled back into my
sleeping bag.
If I had any weather-predicting skills,
I’d call that “foreshadowing.”
Instead, we marched
to another lake the next day. When we had unpacked our gear and got
to the hard work of lying around on the lake’s shore, we noticed a
plume of smoke building over the ridge, right toward the valley
where our cars were parked.
“Cool,” I believe, was the
most commonly used word at first. “Whoa,” became the next
exclamation, as the column built and we realized a major fire was
under way. It had been 10 years since I’d fought fires for
the government in Idaho, but a big fire always looks like a big
fire. This one now had wind, sun and lots and lots of dry lodgepole
forest, much of it beetle-killed.
Right around cocktail
hour we got our first visit from Jocelyn, a backcountry ranger for
the Forest Service and a credit to her agency. With politeness,
good cheer and patience, she informed us the fire was growing fast
— it would eventually spread over 40,000 acres — and
that we were likely to be kicked out of the woods the next day.
We knew she was serious when she returned to get
descriptions of our cars and to ask if we had left keys hidden on
them. Those people who left keys would see their cars again, and
luckily, that included us. Those who didn’t, well, maybe not.
The next day saw us tramping down to our new destination,
heading for a rendezvous with Forest Service folks who would
shuttle us out of the wilderness. We stopped every now and then to
get another look at the boiling plume, massive and dark and moving
closer.
My anxiety level was growing by the minute. Then,
the fire poured over a massive ridge and began moving rapidly
toward the valley we were trying to leave. With still a mile to go,
we were in danger. I spurred the fast hikers on toward the
trailhead, found the slower ones, and told them they had two
options: Haul butt to the safety of the road, or watch the fire
boil over them from the not-so-safe but wet shores of a nearby
creek.
That inspired my hiking buddies to run for their
lives. Later, bending over and gasping for air at the trailhead,
they said they’d never hiked so fast with a backpack on.
The next thing we knew, we were bumping down a forest road in a
pickle-green Suburban, headed for our shuttled cars, high-fiving
each other over our good fortune and pitying those folks whose cars
were now little more than high-altitude boat anchors.
I
miss firefighting sometimes. I miss the thrill of it, of flying
fast in a helicopter toward a big column of smoke. This one, I
heard later, reached up almost 30,000 feet, where it was visible
100 miles away. I still love the smell of a wildfire. For three
summers of my life, fighting fire meant money, work and fun.
But either I’m aging into moderation or I don’t like
getting taken by surprise, because the level of anxiety I felt
watching this fire come my way was new. Those moments were
frightening, waiting for my friends to round the bend to safety.
I hear the cost of fighting the Valley Road Fire will
probably rise to $6 million. It’s still smoldering, by the
way. Only snow will put it out for good.
Shea
Andersen is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He writes in Boise,
Idaho, for newwest.net, the online
magazine.
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