Fire on the Rim. Stephen J. Pyne
weakened by lightning. Some have been so overtaken by surrounding trees that nothing can be seen from their tops. In some cases, the tree has grown so much that bark overlaps the rungs of the ladder, making it all but useless. The Ape wants to restore the whole network.
The work goes slowly. It may take us an entire day to drop a useless tree and remove its ladders; locating a new tree may require that we climb half a dozen. Ape instructs us in the use of spikes and ropes. Many of the trees selected are ponderosa and have no branches for the first forty feet or more of trunk. Someone has to spike up to the nearest large branch in order to position the ladders. The tree must be wired to protect it against lightning. The crown jewel is TT-15, which The Ape personally selects along fireroad E-1. This is a new tower, not simply a replacement, and it is intended to prevent the kind of disorientation that brought about the Saddle Mountain debacle. Gummer does the climbing, while The Ape puffs thoughtfully on his pipe. The tree is a ponderosa pine with a diameter of nearly five feet. The bark seems thin, like an orange balloon ready to burst, as though the tree has been stretched and exceeded its natural dimensions. Gummer proceeds slowly. The tree is almost too wide and the bark too thin for him to grip. We work late to get two ladders (each about twelve feet long) up the first day. Gummer leaves his rope on the branch in such a way that we can pull him up the next day without spiking. Cutting branches is slow work; at thirty-five pounds and over three feet long our chain saws are too cumbersome to use so we cut with handsaws. When the ladders give out, there are large branches to climb. The Ape is content with the view. It is the most difficult climb of the summer, and with it the rehabilitation of the tree towers is complete. Within three years, however, the great ponderosa at TT-15 dies, is declared a hazard, and is felled.
We do odd jobs as assigned, although much of the work is dismissed, fairly or unfairly, as make-work. There is never enough work when there are not enough fires, and there are never too many fires. To kill time, we drive out to Point Imperial to check on the progress of the diseased trees at the overlook, drive through the campground, or make a quick visit to the store. When times are slow, the horseplay begins. To skirt a bad washout on the Sublime Road, Gummer carefully eases a powerwagon through an aspen grove and over a couple of aspen saplings. The Ape is impressed. When The Ape next passes the site, he stops the powerwagon, puts it into four-wheel drive, turns his hard hat backward, and proceeds to level the entire grove of aspen. About a week later Chuck comes down to the fire cache to inquire if we know anything about this aspen grove on the Sublime Road, the one with tire tracks all over it. No one knows anything, but Chuck understands everything.
The Ape is convinced that there is a fire near The Basin. Twice in the past week Red Butte lookout has reported a smoke at fifteen degrees on the North Rim. No one has found anything, and the bearing runs suspiciously close to the dump and to the campground—both sources of smoke—but The Ape trusts the lookout at Red Butte. Red Butte itself is a strange, camelback-shaped monadnock between the South Rim and the San Francisco Peaks. The Forest Service has done nothing more than erect a small shack at its summit. The lookout’s name is Barbara, otherwise known as Barbara Red Butte. When Barbara Red Butte is not sighting smokes, she shoots rattlesnakes. The inside of the shack is plastered with snakeskins and coils. The Ape drives to Lindbergh Hill, site of TT-7, climbs it, and returns with the compass bearing of a possible smoke. He plots his bearing along with the azimuth reported by Red Butte. They cross near Hades Spring in Upper Thompson Canyon. He insists that it has to be a fire.
We drive down fireroad W-1A, a former entrance road for the Park. When the new road was paved, it followed Lower Thompson Canyon; the old road skirts Upper Thompson Canyon. The Ape studies his map. We don our firepacks and begin to walk. When we come to a long meadow, Ape says he smells smoke. He reconstructs the flow of evening air, cooler and heavier, as it spilled like gentle rain over the contours of hill and ravine before emptying into the meadow-lake. Back in the woods he comes upon a smoldering fir. It has been burning for days and would probably smoke for several more. The Ape is triumphant. He announces the location of the Hades fire over the Park radio. Then he tells me that we will bring the powerwagon into the fire.
We mark the route from the meadow to the fire with flagging tape. Getting the truck from W-1A to the meadow is awkward, but The Ape is determined. It will complete his coup. Ape walks ahead with a pulaski, cutting downed aspen logs with its ax end and pulling debris away with the hoe half. There is no vestige of a road present, no prospect of a road in the future. We wind around the forest, our route like oxbow lakes. Eventually we come to the meadow and the fire. The fir is hollow and burns on the inside. Ground fire smokes stubbornly in deep duff. We use up all the water in the slip-on. Ape volunteers—insists upon—taking the powerwagon back to the Area for another load of water, while I scratch a fireline and mop up. He is gone for almost two hours; it is dark when he reappears. We dump the load on the fire, stir the sizzling coals and duff, and prepare to leave. We will return tomorrow before we declare the fire out. The Ape drives back to the Area.
The next morning, however, Stan and Chuck call us into their offices to discuss the “serious,” dents and destroyed side mirror on the red powerwagon. They believe I was driving when the accident occurred. From The Ape’s account it must have happened when I drove the powerwagon through the woods. I don’t know when it happened; I didn’t know anything had happened. A vehicle accident is a serious matter, they remind me. Later, they inspect the scene and discover red paint on the bark of a tree and find splinters of the mirror on the ground nearby. The arrangement of debris makes it clear that impact occurred on the way out. Knowing nothing of this, I approach Stan and Chuck after work. “I don’t know what is going on,” I say, “but I did not smash the pumper.” “Don’t worry, son,” says Stan kindly. “We just figure Pete had a little accident.”
The fire crew does everything collectively: we eat together, work together, play together. Our social world is as compressed as our housing, Building 155, a small cabin constructed during CCC days as temporary officers’ quarters. There is one large room, big enough for two sets of bunk beds along one wall. The wall does not presently exist because a new room is being added to the cabin; in its place is a canvas sheet. On the opposite wall there is a closet and a small bathroom. There are four chests of drawers, two stacked on the other two. The double-decker dressers block the closet. For entertainment we have a battery-operated phonograph and three albums. By the end of the summer I despise every song.
There is a small kitchen that is never used. Instead we eat nearly every meal at the North Rim Inn. We are issued discount cards that entitle us to breakfast for $.50, lunch for $.75, and dinner (except steak) for $1.00. When we work outside the Area, we order box lunches from the Inn at the same discounted price. A rookie smokechaser at pay grade GS-3 makes $2.05 per hour, so it is possible to eat very well on little more than one hour’s pay. We occupy a table at the Inn; the SWFFs take one also, and so do the maintenance crews and the rangers. After dinner we all sit around the table and BS. Everyone has a pipe. I do not smoke, but it becomes apparent that a pipe is mandatory, so I get one and chew on the stem determinedly. We talk about work and money; about girls and parties at the Lodge; about the Park Service and our bosses. We talk about the fire crew.
There are endless discussions about life in the “old days,” generally last year or the year before. A fire crew turns over rapidly. Rare is the seasonal who stays with fire for four summers. Crew traditions are oral, incessantly refashioned, and made ancient by the brevity of seasonal life. In the old days the fire crew ruled the North Rim. They were crazy and hardworking and had lots of fires. They restrung the Fence clad only in hard hats, Jockey shorts, and boots. They cut fireline faster than the Forest Service fire plow. They were living legends. “Call me Shane,” one insisted when he first arrived, so they did. He spent most of his free time on a motorcycle. Drunk, he drove the whole fire crew to the Lodge on his cycle. There was brawny Tim, reckless and roguish, an inventor of rough sport and censor of fire crew morals—which meant, in perverse inversion, that he oversaw a certain level of “corruption.” Tim organized endless parties with girls from the Lodge, Inn, or campground. Above all, there was Reusch. Reusch had been district ranger for a decade, had weathered the Saddle Mountain Burn, and had passed his rough benediction over the fire crew. Reusch was built like a grizzly. One night he picked up Tim, who had the bulk of a tree stump, and placed him on the fireplace mantel. Reusch, it is said, constructed W-6 fireroad while en route