On the road…again!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

Small-Time Fire Fighter

Once again, a dream was the prod to beat a recursive motif chronicle from the cobwebbed mind of the Footloose Forester.  Bit by bit, he knew that a story would come together, but this time it was going to be one part essay, four parts vintage tales, and the mystique of unidentified adventures within the dream.  He also knew that it was time to create an essay despite having too many moving parts: tiny forest fires, medium size fires, range fires, large campaign fires with bulldozers and aerial tankers, a mile of fire hose…

The memories are small fragments, but vivid of the eidetic variety, meaning that some scenes flashed across his mind like a series of color photographs.  The glue that held them together was the thought that a recursive chronicle could be seen as a life lesson for others. A small-time fire fighter in the person of the Footloose Forester certainly learned a few things along the way and he wanted to share them.

As usual, the Footloose Forester found himself counting the number of fires, the venues, and the circumstances before he was satisfied that calling himself a small-time fire fighter fit the bill.  Nonetheless, the memories ranged from New Jersey, Florida, Idaho, Montana, and California; to Mauritania and El Salvador. 

Spot fires like the ones caused by lightning strikes were non-threatening to life and limb, as long as they remained small and could be contained.  Small spot fires were easy to control as long as we had the right tools.  In dense forest that usually meant firefighting shovels with pointed, sharpened blades and Pulaskis, those long handled cutting tools with an ax in front and a digging mattock at the rear of the business end.  As long as it was a ground fire, those tools were all that was needed.  Of course, if there was fire in standing trees or dead snags, saws might be required to cut down the tree to eliminate future flare-ups.

In range fires, the use of wet burlap sacks is probably more effective than either shovels or saws.  As regards the use of water, wetting the sacks may not be possible if there is no adequate water source near the fire line, so wetting the sacks in advance should be part of the firefighting strategy.  Range fires are ground fires but they may become dangerous in circumstances of high winds or if the wind changes direction.  Sometimes off-road vehicles like 4x4 power wagons with thick tires can be used to traverse the terrain and fight the fires close to the leading edges.  A well-equipped off-road vehicle should have water containers to wet burlap sacks, maybe even a few Indian Pumps that are specially designed back packs with hand-held hoses that can direct water on the fire.  The Footloose Forester had a cushy job spraying water with an Indian Pump from the back of a Dodge Power Wagon, while fighting a medium-sized ground fire in the pine barrens of New Jersey.  We were 6-8 undergraduate students at Rutgers who were pressed into service while on a field trip.  Small-time firefighters but big-time lessons in firefighting. 

The snag fire in the top of a huge white fir on the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho was a spot fire, but the smoldering spot was over a hundred feet off the ground.  That 5-foot diameter tree took 3 days to fell with a crosscut saw.  Small time fire, and a small-time firefighter with memories to share and stories to tell.

In Montana the following year, the Footloose Forester fought only a half dozen fires but one of them was large enough to require several crews and two weeks to extinguish.  For sure, the Stone Mountain Fire on the Kootenai National Forest will always be remembered.  It was the only time Footloose Forester and two other crew members were instructed to remove a long line of dead pine needles across the face of a rock talus slope.  An active fire was sweeping from one side of the talus and burning in the direction of a large, unburned patch of timber on the other side.  Removing the rocks was easier and created a breach in the leading edge of the fire at that point.

The numerous times that Footloose Forester was on the fire line in California paled in comparison with others whose jobs aligned them more closely with their official duties.  As a Recreation Patrolman on the El Dorado National Forest, he lived near and was assigned to a campground 27 miles from his Ranger Station at Pollock Pines.  The Footloose Forester was not a high priority choice for firefighting duties.  Once or twice, however, he was summoned by two-way radio to rendezvous with colleagues to search out small fires that were within his surrounding territory. One of the most joyous of experiences related to a spot fire that happened to be on a ridge above the Rubicon River.  The most adventurous aspect of that eidetic episode was traversing the narrow and rocky Rubicon Trail, reputed to be the toughest test of any jeep trail in the United States.  It is speculated that the Rubicon model of Jeep was named in reference to the Rubicon Trail as one of its field test sites.  Truth be known, Footloose Forester lived for such happenstance adventures.

Another memorial campaign fire on the Tahoe National Forest was all about the sights and sounds of a battalion of bulldozers working in various sectors, the buzz of chainsaws creating fire breaks by felling standing trees, of an aerial tanker in the form of a Catalina Flying Boat, and the convict doctor from San Quenten Prison who told Footloose Forester that he used to fly that model of PBY  aircraft in World War II.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

Not to be forgotten was the time that several of us environmental researchers fought a range/brush fire within the confines of the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj, along the Senegal River in Mauritania. As he recalls, the Footloose Forester didn’t have any firefighting tools, so he used his golok (an Indonesian machete) to cut a palm frond to beat out flames that were advancing into heavier vegetation.  It was a small potatoes fire, but it was memorable.   

Finally, there was that long-burning ground fire in agave communities, near the summit of Santa Ana Volcano in El Salvador.  Two or three teams of city firefighters were dispatched to combat the fire in the low-growing but volatile agave patches.  They talked about the need for water to suppress the flames, but high up on the volcano slopes, none was forthcoming.  They had some suitable tools but after 10 days, the fire was not out.

The Footloose Forester was not there as a firefighter, but he went up the slopes more than once to demonstrate to those who accompanied him that the best was to fight the disparate patches of burning agave was to smother the flames with the easy-to-dig silty soil that was several meters deep, even high up near the rim of the volcano.  There was never going to be water to put out the flames, but smothering them with silt soil was relatively easy.  To prove his point, he and a colleague snuffed out a 15-meter line of flames with silt soil that they had dug up with their hands.  And used their hands full of silt to smother the flames.  Primitive, but effective.