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 Back Fire

Setting a Back Fire

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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