Fire on the Rim. Stephen J. Pyne
water storage tanks. In effect, it brought to the surface and rationalized the subterranean drainage of the Kaibab and imposed a reference system for the surface topography. The roads had a logical nomenclature, complemented the network of permanent and temporary (tree) towers, and carried a truck to within a couple of miles of any site on the North Rim. A few additions were added during the Reusch era—E-1A, to improve access to Saddle Mountain, and W-6A, which improbably scales a ridge at right angles. A fire map dated 1955 shows the system at its apogee. The year also commemorates the first entry on the Tipover Tank by a smokechaser.
The origins of the Tank are obscure. But it (or the spring that feeds it) probably dates from CCC days. The corps erected a series of artificial springs, some no more than hollow logs fed by pipes jutting out of hillsides; it improved several old stockman ponds like Greenland Lake, Robber’s Roost Spring, and Basin Spring; and it added some unnamed ponds and springs of its own. We suspect that Tipover Spring was developed to supply the CCC camp at Shinumo Gate with potable water. During the tree tower reconstruction program, we upgraded a few of the old CCC sites and erected several new tanks as water sources—the most elaborate being the one at Swamp Point. Within a couple of years, however, the pine to which the tank had been attached yellows, dies, falls over the Rim, and carries the tank with it. The only survivor of the system is Tipover.
The Tank seems, in fact, to be tipping over. The logs on which the Tank rests are decaying. The base of the log foundation itself is eroding. The tank—all three thousand gallons of it—sits at a junction of two ravines, where dark conifers and leafy aspen give way suddenly to meadow. The site is lovely, but the immediate, the overwhelming impression is that the Tank is about to topple downhill.
Words string across the Tank like vines. “Built by James Kennedy and C. E. Chamberlain.” There is no date given. “Walter Lay. Smokechaser. 1955.” The Tipover Tank is the Inscription Rock of the North Rim. New crewmen pencil in their names and dates, and veterans update their list of seasons. To formal names are added, willed or otherwise, occupational nicknames: Pinyonfoot, John-Boy, Greenback, The Dancing Pole. When Swift transfers to the rangers, “Rim Roach” is scrawled over “Smokechaser.” When Stiegelmeyer decides to dedicate the Tank to himself in bold letters as the Stiegelmeyer Memorial Tank, an “S” is inserted before “Tank.”
And not without reason. The Tank reeks. In its original design the Tank was apparently fed by a pipe from a spring located uphill, but the system fell into disrepair, and for most of its existence the Tank has been filled only by direct precipitation. The top is screened off by a two-by-four frame covered with chicken wire. It is only partially effective. Conifer needles collect in slumps. Dead birds float on the surface. The tank is filled with a vile green brew. In dry years a rookie is sometimes condemned to scour out the inside in the hopes that the plumbing can be activated. It never is. Still, there is a revival of sorts one season, and an ingenious construction project again brings water from the spring to the Tank along what is labeled the BOT Memorial Aqueduct, named for its builders, Brueck, Owen, and Tally. But this misses the point.
The Tank is not an effective reservoir of water. It taps a deeper watershed. It exists to record names, seasons, experiences. Signing the Tipover Tank is the final gesture in the opening of the fireroads. It is the mark of good planning that the fireroads can be opened with sufficient synchronization that all the crews converge at Tipover late one afternoon. Away from the Rim, the Tank is our one true reference point.
The fire is somewhere along the Park boundary, and Duane—laid-back Duane with the stringy, long black hair—is determined to reach it before the Forest Service. The smoke lies within the mutual aid zone: it belongs to the vehicle that can reach it first. The odds are that we won’t be able to get the pumper to the fire anyway, but Duane insists that we stop by the Tipover Tank while en route and try to fill our empty tank. The Tank is a fetid swamp of organic debris. It is full, however, and we draft water from its middle. Duane is galvanized by the thought that the Forest Service might beat us. “It’s our fuckin’ fire,” he insists.
The area beyond the Shinumo Gate was logged late last autumn. Everything to the north of the boundary is a surreal jumble of torn earth and half-burnt slash; the roads are, if anything, confusingly abundant. Park fire maps show an old road, W-4C, that once reached out from the CCC camp at Shinumo, paralleled the boundary, and in a few places moved in and out of an otherwise impermeable aspen worm fence. The derelict road cannot be found. Instead, there are new logging roads, not yet numbered, and a tangle of skid trails. We pick our way as best we can among the wreckage. Duane steers by dead reckoning. There is no sense to the land: it is possible to drive everywhere and go nowhere. Yet we are at least driving, and we hope to maneuver as closely as possible before abandoning the truck, climbing the aspen fence, and walking into the fire. The ponderosa forest is open. Duane figures one of us can take a saw and a fedco, and the other, two fedcos. “And a couple of shovels, of course. And pulaskis.”
But Recon 1 has become bored with our laborious maneuverings and has departed on a general survey of the Park. It will return only when we request it. We work our way to what we take as our best guess and call blindly into a dead radio for the plane to return. Duane is wild with apprehension. “Christ,” he says through clenched teeth. “Let’s drive.” We traverse the boundary another quarter mile, bouncing over roots, stumps, rocks, then catch sight of some smoke drifting on southwesterly winds through the woods. Duane powers the truck to where the smoke intersects the fence. There in front of us—in all its wild improbability—is a gate, surely a relict of the old W-4C fireroad. We swing it open and drive forty yards through the open forest to the fire. We drop the snag, buck up the larger burning logs, douse them with water; the fire will be mopped up by evening.
A Forest Service engine crew, carefully following our tracks, appears near the old gate. Do we need help? they ask plaintively. “No,” crows Duane. “We have a pumper on the fire.” And yes, we have ample supplies of water. The gate, the skid roads, the Tank—it is like something out of a movie, and Duane names it the Hollywood fire. The drive back ensures that we will even pick up a few hours of overtime.
When asked later about its location, Duane replies evasively, “East of Swamp and west of the Twilight Zone. You know, the Tipover area.”
KENNY SIGNS ON
When we arrive at the Tank, there is more graffiti, this time in bright red ink. Steadily, like a malevolent mistletoe, the names of people other than fire crew members have spread across the Tank. Rangers with no fire experience. Fee collectors. Interpreters. Vandals all. Even the road to Tipover is formally eliminated because it passes through a meadow. Official vandalism.
Closed or not, the walk from W-4 to the Tank is easy, and we make it often. During springtime the site is rank with greenery. In the autumn the deep hillsides of Tipover Canyon sway with the yellow and orange of aspen. Lunch at the Tank has a serene, bittersweet glow. The site is too remote from the Rim for there to be many fires—a fact for which we are grateful. Surrounding ravines are unusually steep, and the forest is satanically dense. One fire southeast of Tipover forced a party of smokechasers to cross three ridges, each steeper than the last. As they marched back and forth with fedcos, they named the ridges—Devastation, Desolation, Destruction. This is not a scene for fires, but it is an ineradicable part of the geography of fire. We travel here not for fires but for the Tank.
The Tank’s status remains ambivalent. It will not be forcibly removed, yet it will never be integrated with the managed geography of the North Rim. Lenny and I add another year below our names. Dash tries, without success, to erase the name of a particularly obnoxious fee collector. The galvanized metal holds the ink like a brand. Kenny, a rookie, searches for an empty space on which to write. “Hey, what should I call myself?” he asks, almost shouting as the rest of us leave the Tank for lunch under the aspen. Smokechaser, FCA, fire guard, fireaid, fire management specialist—all have fallen into disuse. “Longshot,” Donnie tells him. “We’re Longshots now.”
Dash marvels that the wonderful Tank has not yet toppled down.
CHAPTER THREE
Powell Plateau
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