Lessons in Firefighting

This post is another writing "challenge" we had in the internship that I was in. It's based off of a book we read in there by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz. Which, if you haven't read it, it's a great book.

The challenge is to, after reading the book, write your own chapter in a similar style as Donald Miller uses. This is a great exercise to try particularly if you're a writer. Try doing it for any genre of writing. I remember for my poetry class one of our assignments was to adapt a similar style as Stephen Dunn in one of our poems. It's a great way to try and broaden your horizons and expand your imagination and creativity.

So, here it is. My rendition of a Blue Like Jazz chapter. I also changed their names because I didn't think they'd appreciate me telling about them on the internet. Hope it makes sense.

By the way, plug alert: Donald Miller's blog is also awesome.

A couple summers ago I worked as a wildland firefighter with a company based out of Redmond, Oregon. I’d thought about doing this for a while, but I was scared. Who wouldn’t be scared of a raging inferno in the forest? And on top of that, in California, there were a lot of people dying in the fires. But one day when I was visiting my best friend, Corey, and his friends at my parents’ house, we prayed about the different areas we needed wisdom in; one of mine was a job.

Later that afternoon a guy from the Ellensburg station of the company called me, telling me that if I still wanted to work for them, I would have to go down to Redmond to take the class for my Red Card. At the time, I was also thinking about being a nurse’s aide; both were great opportunities. I had to make a decision, but I kept creating obstacles for myself: What if I don’t have a place to stay in Redmond? What if I don’t get through the class? What if this nursing home doesn’t hire me? All these dumb excuses that didn’t make sense in the greater spectrum of God.

When I got back to Ellensburg, I talked to my roommate, Brian, about the situation. Brian was an EMT in Yakima. He’d just told me about a case he’d seen in Yakima where a little, angry, old man had been complaining of sores on his legs. The little old man hobbled up to the stretcher, whacking his Pomeranian with his cane. When he got to the hospital, Brian helped him lay back in the hospital bed by lifting his legs, when he did this, one of the sores burst open, spilling maggots.

I vented to him about how I had to make a decision within hours. I’ve always been the kind of person who needed to be told what to do with his freedom.

“What do you want to do?” Brian asked.

“I would love to try out the firefighting job, but I’d also like a longer lasting job, and the nurse’s aide thing could offer a lot more opportunities in the medical field. I’ve never had a job that lasted beyond a summer.”

“Well, ok, what do you need, money or proof that you can keep a job?”

“I need money, but what am I going to do if they don’t give me a place to stay? I can’t afford a motel, or anything else for that matter.”

“Don’t think about those things. First you need to decide what it is you want, and need, to do; God will provide the rest. Besides, don’t you like camping?”

He was right. The lilies and the sparrows have places to stay, and so God will provide for our every need, even when we don’t think he will.

I decided that I needed to try it out. I called back my future boss and told him I’d be down there.

I loved telling people my plan.

“What are you up to this weekend?” Someone would ask after Salt.

“Oh you know, I’m leaving for Oregon to do a firefighting class, then who knows, I could be gone for a number of weeks, or more.”

“What!? That’s crazy!”

I loved it. I especially loved to gloat about the fact that I didn’t need to have a place to stay.

My plan was to camp on Black Butte, a little mountain right outside Redmond—it’s actually not very little, it is a mountain after all. But when I finally got there, they offered me a bed in their sleeping quarters, something my boss told me they’d never do. After a week of waking up early and learning fire behavior and hose-throwing, I was their number one choice of who to send out. Not because of anything particularly special, just that I was living on the base, and I was 21 and had a clean driving record, so they gave a MSPA certification, which meant that I could drive for the company.

Fourth of July night, my Redmond boss came into the station, right after we’d got some replacements from North Carolina—which was who I was chatting with—and he told me that the next morning I would be waking up at 5:30 and getting on a plane to Big Sur, California to replace a driver they’d lost—he didn’t die, he just went to another crew. And by the way, this would be my first time ever stepping on a plane. And it was quite memorable.

This little old lady asked me as we got on the connecting flight to Monterey, “Are you going to help us with all our fires?” It was probably the sweatshirt I was wearing that said Firefighter that gave it away. “Yes ma’am,” I said in my most heroic voice. She beamed with a thankful smile.

I got off the plane around 1:00 where a couple of guys picked me up and we headed for the hills. It took us about three hours to get there because it was a ways down some crazy dirt roads. When we finally got there I was instructed to grab my sleeping bag and a two gallon thing of water and a tool. I was not ready for one of the hardest nights I’d ever have to endure.

We hiked about 5 miles with roughly 40 lbs of gear, uphill—and we’re talking steep hills—before we finally reached the rest of the crew. The 3 hour hike gave me a good chance to get to know my squad boss. We started talking about philosophy and religion and just general life issues.That’s when he found out I was a Christian.

“So you’re down with the JC, eh Daryl?”

“I sure am” I responded.

We started talking about what that means and how Christians tend to be over bearing and sometimes try to convert everyone they meet.

“Well how ‘bout that, a Christian who thinks. I’ve never met one of those before.”

I just laughed. But I took it to heart. I realized in that conversation that we, as Christians, are allowed to just have friendships, and allow the conversations with friends to come naturally. We don’t have to get everyone to meet our standards; rather, we should meet them where they’re at, and show them how we aren’t so different.

I recently watched a movie about Don Quixote called Man of La Mancha. There’s a scene where Don Quixote’s niece’s fiancé—kind of hard to follow, I know—decides that in order to fix the Don, he needs to play along in the Don’s fantasy. Get him to believe that others think like him and then show his faults. I liked this because it showed how we need to not just keep telling people how they are crazy and need to change, but rather show how we can sometimes be a little crazy too.

After I got up in the hills, I met the crew that would keep me company until 1 AM that night. I worked with some very interesting people on that fire. Most of them were ex-cons, some of them murderers. One day when we were doing HT or Hiding Tactics—a little thing we do when we don’t want to work—the guys exchanged stories.

Len, the pot-smoking Indian was quiet; really nice and friendly. He talked about a time on the Res when he was younger and a couple of guys started brawling over a girl. One of them went back to his house, grabbed a gun, came back, and killed the other.

Mike, a bigger guy, one of our sawyers—chainsaw guy—told about how he ended up in prison: he robbed a bank and shot a guy, lucky for Mike, the guy he shot didn’t die; so Mike didn’t get too bad a sentence. The only reason he got caught was because one of the guys robbing the bank with him snitched him out. The guys he was robbing the bank for told him that he had two choices: kill the snitch, or they’d take care of both of them. So he stabbed him twelve times and threw him over a pier—I’m not sure where the pier was in prison, but that’s what he said. They were all interesting people. They didn’t even seem to have any remorse for these things.

Some of them opened up about their driving force for some of their acts. Charles, when he was younger, had a step dad who tried to molest him, so he shoved a pen through his cheek. Another time, his buddy raped his girlfriend, so he stabbed him in the neck.

The most interesting thing about these guys was that they were really close to me. Not just because they were my only civil contact for two weeks, but because they cared about me.

They started out the tour making fun of me and trying to freak me out enough to go home. It didn’t work. I was raised to have some pretty tough skin and not get offended when people harass me. So I took it. Mostly because I knew they were just not used to seeing a new human.

Charles one day sat me down when we were waiting for an engine to come and bring us water to put out a hot spot, and he told about how I needed to follow Jesus every day, with all of my heart. I couldn’t believe the words he was saying, even if this guy could quote scripture better than anyone I’d ever met. I’d just figured he’d just studied it to know what Christians believed and were being taught.

“Daryl,” he said, “you gotta commit to it now. And never let go of that commitment. The punishment for people like me, who know the truth about Jesus and choose not to follow him, is going to be much harsher than even these other guys who don’t know him.”

This guy had one of the dirtiest lifestyles I’d ever encountered, and he was preaching to me…I liked it.

“You know the truth, yet you choose not to follow him?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s kinda stupid, I know, but it’s my choice.”

“Why don’t you follow him?”

“Because I like my life the way it is. And it would be very different to follow him.”

I enjoyed the sincerity he had for me. He was the main guy giving me a hard time when I first got on the crew, but he was also the first guy to run to my defense if the situation ever arose. One day Charles got a hernia after trying to throw a tree and had to sit in the truck and wait for us to finish, the crew boss joined him. Charles was in my truck and my cell phone went off, so the boss took the time to rummage through my text messages, reading them off to Charles. After that, Charles told me, and some other guys, and every one of them agreed that what the boss did, wasn’t right; and each of the guys told me that they’d have my back if he tried to hurt me when I confronted him about it—he had a violent history.

I lost touch with those guys after I reconnected with the Ellensburg crew. I missed them a lot after that. Sure it was a little hectic. We bantered about our boss most of the time because he almost got us killed once or twice, but it was great connection. I could really relate to those guys, even though their lifestyles were completely different from mine. They showed me what real friendship looked like. And I’ll never forget them.