A year-end letter I sent in 1994 where I talk about the odd things you can recycle at a forest fire and winning a major forestry award in, of all places, Cleveland.
Me building my house
1994 Highlights: An Almost Normal Life for a Naturalist
Category Archives: Fire Fighting
1989 Highlights: An Off Beat Dominican Republic Vacation
My 1989 year-end letter about an unconventional vacation on a tropical island, the Cartoonist Association’s annual cocktail party, and forest fire fighting in Hells Canyon.
On a donkey in the Dominican Republic
1988 Highlights: Forest Restoration After A Fire
This is the year-end letter I sent in 1988 about a fire crew’s life after a major fire.
My Fire Crew
1987 Highlights: First Year as a Forest Fire Fighter
The internet? Friend or foe? Now I need not limit myself to boring friends and family with my year-end letters. I can now bore complete strangers. And why settle for posting only one year-end letter when it’s almost as easy to post two, three, five, or even twenty-five? This month I’m planning on posting one letter a day until Christmas. This is the first year-end letter I wrote after my first summer as a forest firefighter in 1987.
Setting a Back Fire
Excerpts from a Fire Fighter’s Journal
Fire season is upon us and that got me thinking about my days as a forest firefighter.
It was one of my “other duties as assigned” when I was Siuslaw National Forest’s head naturalist at Cape Perpetua. These are excerpts from a journal I kept over the years. They first appeared in Backpacker Magazine.
“Concerned crew boss: ‘If you get hurt, be sure to tell me immediately so I can start the paperwork.’” Continue reading