Wild Inferno (8 page)

Thursday, 0430 Hours

By the time my watch started to sing its soft, high-pitched
tink-tink, tink-tink
alarm, there were already lights on in the cabins and I could see shadows moving around in the windows. I got up, rolled up my sleeping bag, and scuttled back across the dry grass to throw it in the tent. But the tent was collapsed, the fabric drooping in toward the center, hanging in pieces from the supports. I walked around the ruined shelter and saw that the back side of it had been punched through with something sharp at the top, and the fabric had been split down the middle to the ground. Someone had shredded my tent in the night!

I searched around under the dangling folds of nylon. My red bag, which held my firefighter gear and personal effects, must have been missed by the assailant. I looked through it, checking my items from memory. I always packed my red bag the same way so it was ready to grab at a moment's notice. The extra pair of Nomex pants was always rolled along the left side, the two extra yellow shirts along the right, with the shoes on the bottom, their soles toward the outside of the bag. Many times, on a fire, I got to bed long after the rest of the crews and had to find my things in the dark. Or, rising early, I might need my ditty bag and a change of clothes before the sun came up. A flashlight or my headlamp would work if I wasn't sleeping in a space where others were still snoozing. But if I was, I knew how to find what I needed by feel and memory of my standard packing order. It didn't appear to have been disturbed.

I grabbed my clothes and went inside to pee. Most of the women were still asleep, so I moved quietly to the bathroom. The team's lead information officer stood in front of the sink, brushing her hair. She gave me a silent smile, picked up her ditty bag, and vacated the bathroom so I could use it.

When I came out, my face washed, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, and my skin slathered with sunscreen, I grabbed my sat phone from where it was charging and took it outside. I punched in the security officer's number and reported that my tent had been ripped into.

“We'd better get a line around Fire Camp, and get those campers out of here,” she said. “Obviously someone was looking for money or valuables. They didn't take anything, did they?”

“No. My red bag was untouched. Not that there was anything of much value in there.”

“Yeah, wrong target if a thief wanted to make a big find. Firefighters are not the richest folks I can think of.”

“Not in economic terms, anyway,” I said.

“Well, I'll report it to the park ranger here. We're setting a camp perimeter today. It was just chaos yesterday. There wasn't much time to—”

“No, I know. I know. I just wanted to inform you about the tent.”

“I don't think we'll have any problems once we get the campers out of the park.”

“Yeah, I'm going to leave my red bag in there if you're setting a perimeter. It will probably be just fine. Whoever it was—if they saw something they wanted, it would already be gone by now.”

When I went back into the cabin to get the phone charger, a couple of the women who'd slept on the floor were stirring, pulling on their pants and lacing their boots. Seeing them preparing for another hard day on the fire lines was awe-inspiring to me. If a fire is worth fighting, then every firefighter is bone tired at the end of the first day. And every day after that, it gets worse. The fatigue escalates along with the demand on the body's physical and mental reserves, the smoke, the heat, the stress, the danger. Firefighters will seldom get more than a few hours of sleep a night on an incident—and often not in such decent conditions as this cabin. And yet, they rise faithfully to the sound of a portable alarm or the squad boss's gentle shove. Up they get, doing what they have to without complaint.

Most wildland firefighters are innately physical people—they stay in shape. But more than that, they are people in love with the land. When a firefighter is out in the wild and sees a beautiful piece of the earth she might never have seen, it makes her fiercely determined to preserve and protect it.

None of the women in the cabin would rather spend their summer days lying on a beach slathered with suntan oil when they could be carrying fifty-pound packs, digging fire line by the chain and cat-holes for their toilets, and wearing hot clothes and a helmet eighteen hours a day. Some had probably quit their jobs to be here. Jobs are easy enough to find—fires are literally the call of the wild. No self-respecting wildland firefighter hesitates when she hears that call. I put my head down for a moment and thought of Momma Anna's instruction:
Now, do.

This is what we do on a fire,
I thought.
No matter how hard it is or how tired we are, we get up and we go out and we do the job we're here to do.

I headed for the chow tent and saw the Navajo Hot Shots marching in tool order to breakfast—all in a straight line, as they would form up in the field according to the tool each man carried. Pulaskis first, then shovels. They were dressed in their yellows and greens, every shirt tucked in neatly, the hotshot patch identifying each as a member of this crew sewn exactly the same distance above the left shirt pocket, every pair of gloves hung from the belt on a carabineer on the right-hand side, every bandana the same color. When they went through the line, they stayed in formation, and they sat in that same arrangement at the tables at the back of the chow hall.

I found Kerry and Roy drinking coffee across a table from one another, both looking haggard. I took my plate of grub and sat with them. Roy said, “So you guys got de-stressed last night?”

I looked at Kerry. “I guess you could say that,” I said.

“Yeah, we debriefed,” Kerry said, and he got up with his plate still full of scrambled eggs and bacon and headed for the trash.

Roy looked at me and winked. “Don't worry. I got my eye on him.”

Most of the team was at the morning briefing, and additional crews had come in overnight. A meteorologist who had joined us from Durango gave a detailed spot weather forecast. The safety officer warned of the dangers of having crews working out ahead of the fire and of altitude sickness, dehydration, and sunburn. The information officer quelled rumors that one of the Three-Pueblos Hot Shots had died. She promised to get more information as soon as possible, and to have a camp newsletter and bulletin board up within the day. But she did not mention Grampa Ned's death because we'd been requested to suppress the story if possible until there were more details from the FBI, and until positive identification and notification of the next of kin could be made.

Ops Chief Charlie Dorn said the fire had made a run during the night, and was now threatening Camp Honor, the Ute tribal youth camp. “Structure protection crews are working in there now, but like Safety said, they're ahead of the fire, and that's not good. We've given them some trigger points to use to determine if and when they need to pull out and get back to the road. The Navajo Hotshots have arrived this morning, and we may have another Type 1 hand crew here by noon. The San Juan Hotshots are normally stationed in this area, but they're working a fire in California, so they aren't available. Durango Helitack has called back its chopper and crew of nine from Grand Junction, so we expect to get them busy here by early this afternoon. We did have a wind shift last night, so the northern head is the one that's most active now.”

“We're sending an archaeological resource advisor out with every crew,” Roy added. “There are literally hundreds of sites in the fire area and surrounding. For that reason, even on the flatter ground up north, we can't use dozers, and we'll need to be careful about digging line as well. The smoke is now making travel on Highway 160 between Durango and Pagosa Springs very dangerous. To top it all off, folks, we had a report of a good-sized black bear during the night, so your lookouts are going to have to watch for that, too.

“Now, before we disperse for the day, we want to make you aware that we will receive a blessing ceremony from the elders of the Southern Ute tribe. For those of you who wish to participate, we'll meet directly after the briefing at the park's amphitheater.”

As the crews dispersed, the Boss waved me over. “Can you take the meals you ordered up to the Native Americans when you go up to the high mesa with the scientists this morning?”

“Sure, but that means I'll probably have to drive by myself. All that food is going to take up a lot of space in a rig.”

“Well, do that, then try to get back down here quick as you can. The Navajo Hotshots want a designated space for spiritual ceremony. I want you to talk with them about that, get them what they need. Then, here's a number.” He handed me a slip of paper with a phone number and the name
Nuni Garza
written on it. “It's another Ute woman looking for that Grampa Ned guy. Have you heard anything back from the FBI?”

“No. But it was late in the evening when they recovered the body. I expect I'll hear something this morning once they do the autopsy.”

“Listen,” Roy said, putting his sunglasses on, “when you're at the ruins on the mesa up there this morning, talk to them about preparing for an evacuation. Just in case.”

“They already told me that they weren't going to leave.”

“Well, we don't have any authority to make them, that's for sure. And the governor of Colorado, the agency rep for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and about six different tribal nations have pressured me to hold off on recommending an evac. But I'd hate like hell for this fire to march up that hill like it started to do yesterday, and take a life, maybe a lot of lives.”

“I know. But, Boss, some things are even more important to the Pueblo people than their lives. They believe they're part of something greater—sort of like points on a continuum.”

He shook his head. “I just want to keep them
live
points on that continuum.”

“Me, too. By the way, who's doing the blessing ceremony for the Southern Utes?”

“There he is now.” Roy pushed his chin in the direction behind me.

I turned around, and Bearfat approached with his scantily clad young companion. “Good morning, Jamaica Wild,” he said, grinning.

“Hello, Mr. Bearfat. I understand you've arranged to give a blessing ceremony here. I thought you needed what you called ‘a clean space' to do this,” I said.

He shook his head. “That would be the case if I were doing it. But I'm not doing it. I just arranged it for the elders. Here they come now.”

Thursday, 0545 Hours

A delegation of six men and women from the Southern Ute tribe stood in the performance area of the amphitheater. I recognized one of them. It was Mary Takes Horse, the woman who had told the story at the storytelling ceremony the previous night. The first speaker was a man who called the assembled to prayer for the hotshot crew in the hospital. The firefighters removed hats and helmets and stood in silence as the elder offered a Christian prayer. The gathered forces were completely silent. Next to me, a woman firefighter dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her bandana. Another man in his greens and yellows kept pinching his nose, swallowing hard. Sensing the stillness, a small bird near the lake began to chatter, adding voice to the prayer.

After that, Mary Takes Horse began to speak. “They say a long time ago, Creator put the four-leggeds and the wingeds, the crawling things, the swimming things, and the slithering things on the earth before the two-legged human beings. Back then, the world was always dark, and it was very cold because they had no fire here. When the two-legged human beings came, all the animals wanted to welcome their new brothers and sisters and make them happy. So the animals talked to Creator. They asked for a way to make the human beings warm, a way for them to cook their food, a way for them to light their way at night. And Creator told Father Sky to give fire to the earth. And so Father Sky gathered great clouds and wind, and cold and heat, in the same place, all fighting with each other to have power over the other. And soon, all that angry energy broke one of the clouds open and a ribbon of fire leaped from the sky and shot down to the earth like a beautiful shining arrow. The place where it landed burst into flames, and there was warmth and light. And all who lived here on this earth knew that fire was good.”

Then one of the men stepped forward. “For many generations, Native Americans have lived peacefully with fire. We used fire as a tool, both as individuals and as nations. We have managed the land and the things growing on it using fire. We have used fire to keep the forests in good health and the grasslands renewed.

“But since the United States federal government started taking over the land and trying to control both the land and fire, the forests have grown too thick and heavy, the grasslands have not been renewed and refreshed, and fire has become an enemy and no longer a friend. When this energy comes from the sky now, it is not as a beautiful shining arrow, but rather as an enemy comes—destroying our villages, eating our forests and grasslands until there is nothing left, robbing us of the beauty and peace in our world.

“We do not want to be like the warriors in the Sky World when they fight—the clouds and the wind and the heat and the cold fighting one another for power. We hope to work together to find a way to bring the warmth and light back to the world of people.

“And so we bless the warrior firefighters, Indian and non-Indian, who have come here today to fight this fire. And we bless the animals and the land. And we bless the fire, too, that it will find its right place of power and no longer be an enemy, but rather come to renew the land and not destroy it. We are all brothers and sisters here. Fire knows no boundaries, and it strikes all communities—native and nonnative. Today, we must be as when the first beings lived on this earth: welcoming to our brothers and sisters who have come to fight this fire. Welcoming and offering to help in any way we can.”