Reading on fire

A letter from 2018

It’s normal to write the editor of a literary magazine to obliquely apologize for letting your subscription lapse, right? I found this in my email archives. Subscribe to Zyzzyva.

Dear Oscar,

Somewhere, I have an unspectacular photo of my roommate’s bunk from last fire season: a fishing rod hanging on the wall, a rumpled bedspread, and on the nightstand, a copy of Zyzzyva. He was excited to have it. We read a surprising amount in the fire season. We fill odd moments of downtime: driving to incident command posts, waiting for humidity to drop into the sweet spot for a back burn, sweating at lunch and leaned against a pack, tired of talking to anybody. My first crew had a lot of University of Montana undergrads paying their way through college. They would trade paperbacks and discuss them while they set up tents, in an excited, can you believe what Teddy Roosevelt faced on the River of Doubt sort of way. Again, something to talk about by August.

I’m up at night before day two with my new crew. The literature in the crew room appears to trend in the Clive Custler direction, although of course one can read the obligatory fire suppression manuals and accident reports. I came into this season with a couple of injuries (back, hamstrings) that forced me to skip preseason training. My performance on day one disappointed me. I did as many pull-ups as the push-up minimum, but after a dismal finish to the mile and a half run I was wiped. Another rookie went to the hospital.

There’s no guarantee I finish this training. We are one of about twelve helicopter rappel crews in the nation, and we train for five weeks before I can call myself a rappeller. One of the crews had a washout rate of 3/4 last season. On another crew’s mountain week, the physically fittest rookie shook his squad boss’s tent in the middle of the night, and when he emerged, asked to leave. He couldn’t face his rookie brothers and sisters to say he was done. Two seasons ago, a standout rookie made it to the last day of Rappel School, slid out of the helicopter perfectly, and forgot to flip his rope, to signify he had checked that it wasn’t caught in a tree. He went home. 

So I’m not sure how they’ll mess with me, but I do know I’ll read. The torture and blessing of being an initial attack resource, as opposed to grinding through campaign fires, is you wait. Engine crews park on promontories in advance of a storm, fiddling on phones before rain drums the hood and everyone watches a windshield, dry erase markers poised, for lightning strikes. Helitack crews like mine can end up stranded on the tarmac, bags packed and flight helmets ready, awaiting a resource order. Books help.

This season I’ve packed Pachinko, On Bullshit, Waiting, a Swedish hockey novel I’m excited to share, a couple sci-fi paperbacks, Elif Bautman’s novel, and Didion’s notebooks, among others. My subscription check to you is on the desk, sealed and stamped. I think last season the renewal got away from me. 

As cell coverage expands the reach of Instagram further into the wilderness, younger firefighters are finding other ways to kill time. For the next month, though, I’ll be in a quiet, rural town, only working 8 hours a day, then returning to the solitude of a CCC bunkhouse built in 1937. It stands mostly empty without the summer silviculturists and biologists. I’ll cook, make tomorrow’s lunch, stretch a hell of a lot, apply icy hot, and open a book.

Anyway, I was glad to find your note, and I’ve been enjoying issues of Zyzzva for quite a few summers now. Let me know how it’s going in San Francisco. Sorry I couldn’t write a better letter. Tomorrow’s a big day, and I have to sleep.

Benz