What you need to know about me.

I’ve suffered a few “abrupt and brutal audits” in my career. They’ve certainly shaped who I am as a wildland fire manager and human being. I wrote this in 2015 for a writing class at the U of NC Asheville. The assignment was to write of a place that held deep meaning.

The Beautiful Terrible

I remember the moment when I first realized how much I loved the Klamath Mountains and valleys.  It was a lovely April evening, 2007, and I was driving north on Interstate 5 in California; the long downhill stretch just past the town of Weed on my way home from Sacramento to Yreka.  I was coming from a meeting with my peers from the other 17 National Forests in California.  I’d only be in the job for about seven months, and it had been a steep learning curve.  Finally I felt like I was picking things up, figuring out the many challenges that came with the job. 

In northernmost California I-5 divides the Klamath Mountains from the wide valleys of the Great Basin to the East.  On my right Mt. Shasta’s hulking, snow-covered slopes glowed pink like cake frosting in the setting sun. The sight of Mt. Shasta still made me catch my breath.  Technically a volcano and not a mountain, it rose drastically from the valley floor, standing alone like the cool jock showing up unexpectedly at tryouts for the school musical.  It makes perfect sense that it is considered a high holy place by the local tribes.  Mt. Eddy, part of the Klamath range, was on my left.  I glanced out the side window, scanning the ridge for the lookout that was not yet staffed this early in spring.   In the gloaming the air was sparkly and clear, and I could see the white tip-top of Oregon’s Mt. McLaughlin, another volcano, far off to the northeast.  The pastures and grasslands, dotted black and brown with grazing cattle, were still so green from the winter rains and snow that they nearly glowed. Redbud trees heavy with startling fuchsia blossoms grew in gangly clumps along the highway and in the yards of the small and simple ranch homes.

I felt a surprising rush of happiness that nearly moved me to tears and felt the sharp pain in my chest normally experienced at the onset of first love.  This.  This diverse landscape of steep, sharp mountains, lush expansive valleys, and cold rushing rivers was where I belonged.  Beginning my eighth month as the Deputy Fire Chief for the Klamath National Forest I already felt a deep connection to this place and its people unlike the five national forests where I had previously worked.  My previous job in another state had been challenging.  I’d never felt included in the fire organization there, never felt like I belonged.   Vowing early in my career to never work for the US Forest Service in California, here I was.  And I loved it. I’d found my forest and my tribe.  This was going to be a great gig. 

*

While Death did not escort me to the Klamath, it met me at the door one August evening, my third day on the job.   In a hotel, my phone rang at about nine o’clock in the evening.  My new boss, Jay, who I’d known for a few years, was on the other end.

            “Riva, it’s Jay.”  I immediately knew something was wrong. His voice was heavy and sad.  “We’ve had a helicopter go down on the Titus Fire.” I had been lying in bed watching TV and I jumped to my feet.

            “Oh, no.  Oh, shit,” I said.  “What happened?”

            “It was a Sky Crane.  Crashed into the Klamath River.  Both pilots are dead.” I felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

            “Fuck.  Ah, fuck.  I’m sorry, Jay.  Do you need me to come in?” I didn’t know what I could do to help but I wanted to help.

            “Uh…no.  You don’t need to come in.  I’m leaving dispatch soon.  It’s just…. It’s just…. Well…” he said.  He was quiet for a moment, working to control his emotions.  “I will pick you up at your hotel at 0400.  Sorry so early, but it’s a long drive.  And we have a long day ahead of us.”

            “Okay.  I doubt I’ll sleep much anyway.”

            “Me, neither,” he said, suddenly sounding old to me.  I didn’t want to hang up the phone, but I didn’t know what else to say.

            “I’ll see you in the morning, Jay.” 

            “Good night, Riva.  I’m glad you’re here.”

I stood there, alone in my room at the Best Western Miner’s Inn, surrounded by mass-produced “art” and the standard low-end hotel décor of particleboard furniture and floral, polyester bedspreads.  I felt helpless and sad.  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea taking this job.  What the fuck had I gotten myself into?

*

In the wildland fire community the Klamath National Forest is one of the worst and best places to fight fire.  Biologically diverse, the mountains are extremely steep; the knife-edge rocky ridges with fingers of thick stands of conifer trees spreading down the slopes separated by boulder-strewn openings.  At the lower elevations along the primary rivers, the Salmon, the Scott, the Klamath and all their tributaries, were thick stands of poison oak, many of them head-high.  The forest and nearly all of its ecosystems had evolved from fire.  Most species of tree, shrub, and grass had adapted to fire, and many needed fire to live and regenerate. This forest was born of fire.

It is a rite of passage to fight fire on the Klamath.  Legendary fire seasons of 1987, 1988, 1999, and then 2006-2009 validated and ruined careers of many and also claimed the lives of some.  The Klamath either made you or broke you.  If you could fight fire on the Klamath and survive, well shit, you could fight fire anywhere.  If your feet didn’t blister and bleed from hiking up the 60 degree slopes, if you didn’t end up covered in oozing, itchy blisters from the poison oak, if you didn’t get taken out by a rock rolling down the slope and bouncing chest-high off the dirt, if the thick, choking smoke that clung to the valleys day after day after day didn’t infect your lungs with chronic bronchitis, then you passed the test. And you wore your time fighting fire on the Klamath like a badge. 

The California Smokejumpers, based in Redding less than 100 miles south of the Klamath, don’t jump a lot of fires on the Klamath.  Very few places to safely land.  Either too steep, too rocky, or too closed in with trees.  During the historic fire season of 2008 when President Bush visited the jump base in Redding, he asked a wiry smokejumper if he was often afraid.  The jumper replied, a wry smile on his face, “The only time I’m afraid is when I’m standing in the open door of the airplane looking down at the Klamath.” 

Even today, this far to the east in North Carolina, when dispatch calls the guys to see if they are available to go on a fire assignment to California, most reply, “I’ll go anywhere but the Klamath.”

*

Unfortunately, that late-night call from Jay in 2006 wouldn’t be the last for me in my three years on the Klamath.   In July of 2007 another helicopter crashed while fighting a fire on the Klamath.  But instead of a catastrophic tail-rotor failure like what caused the Sky Crane to crash into the river the summer before, this time it wasn’t a mechanical failure.  The helicopter nearly crashed on top of one of the Klamath’s own crews.  The pilot, after getting the long-line tangled in a treetop, peeled off to his right to avoid crashing into the crew, killing himself instead.  It was the result of a cascading series of poor decisions made by several firefighters.  “Human factors.”   Couldn’t blame this one on a faulty part.  And what usually comes with fault is guilt and remorse, and the result can be career-ending; not necessarily from disciplinary action or management’s heavy hand, but from the personal struggle within.  From the inability to reconcile one’s own role in the death of another.

Tragedy would come again in 2008.  Jay had since retired leaving me temporarily in charge of the fire program.  The best boss I’ve ever had, one of my closest friends, had had enough of death and personnel bullshit and tapped out.  Death first showed up to him on the Klamath in 2002 when a Lassen National Forest engine dropped a front tire off the edge of a forest road on the Stanza Fire and rolled 300 feet down an embankment.  All five firefighters had their seatbelts on, but the crash was so violent that three were ripped out of their seatbelts and tossed from the engine like rag dolls as it tumbled down the mountain.  Two were killed instantly, crushed by the rolling hunk of metal. One died on the side of the mountain in the arms of a Kentucky firefighter.   Jay had told me that he’d struggled to deal with that accident, and it had been a long, difficult process for him.  The helicopter crashes in 2006 and 2007 stacked on top of the engine accident, became a horrible weight to bear. 

The 2008 fire season had started in Northern California two months early and with gusto.  On June 20 an early dry lightning storm rolled in off the coast, flashing and raging across the already parched northern part of the state.  The storm produced over 25,000 lightning strikes in that one night, igniting over 2,000 wildfires.  My husband and I were sitting in our camp chairs in the little city park in Yreka listening to a local band.  We were drinking beer with friends, watching the little kids dance and twirl to the music.  As the day receded into night we could see lightning etch the Western sky like neon spider webs.  The wind came up, blowing through the treetops, the branches bending and arching as if also dancing.  Whoa, I remember thinking to myself; we may get some fires out of this.  We ended up with nearly one hundred fires on the Klamath alone.

On July 26^th we’d been managing large wildfires from the June 20^th lightning storm for almost five weeks.  My staff and I were exhausted.  At our level we provided the oversight and management of hundreds of firefighting resources.  Hotshot crews, engine crews, bulldozers, helicopters, from all over the country.  Not to mention the caterers, shower units, and base camp managers who supported the “boots on the ground.”  I had taken a rare and much needed day off.  I’d hardly seen or spoken to my husband in days, and we enjoyed a beautiful summer day kayaking on Shasta Lake.  We’d barely walked in the door, the dogs happy to see us and dancing around our legs, when my phone rang.  I saw from the caller ID it was Jaime.  She was the Duty Officer for the day. 

            “Hey, what’s up, “I asked. 

            “Riva, you need to come in.  There’s been an accident.”  Fuck.

            “What happened?”

            “Just come in,” Jaime said.  She was vague for a reason.  She didn’t want me killing myself or anyone else speeding over to the office.  But I knew it was bad.

            “Jaime.  What the fuck happened?” I demanded, my voice tight as a wire.   

            “There’s been a burnover on the Panther Fire.  One fatality, one injury.  Come in,” she said quietly.  My vision narrowed.  I felt like I was suddenly standing in a dark room by myself.

            “Who is it?” I whispered.

            “Just come in, Riva,” she repeated. 

            “God damn it, Jaime.  Tell me who the fuck it is,” I said, loudly this time.  The Panther Fire had been a problem for days, and we were soon handing it off to one of the teams managing a large group of fires for us.  We still had some of our forest folks on it.   She knew what I was asking.  She sighed, long and low with the slightest waver.

            “It’s not one of ours.”

            “Okay.  Okay. I’ll be right in.”  I hung up the phone, tears blurring my vision. I was so relieved it wasn’t one of “our” firefighters, and then I realized it was someone else’s.  Someone’s co-worker or child or spouse or parent wouldn’t be coming home.  I felt nauseated with guilt at that moment.  For being glad one of our firefighters hadn’t died.  But I’d already learned that a piece of all us dies when we lose a firefighter anywhere.  I cried softly in my husband’s arms for a few seconds.  “It’s not one of ours,” I said mostly to myself.  I pulled away from him then, physically and emotionally.  “I gotta change and go in,” I said, wiping my eyes. 

The next several days were filled with the shit-storm a fire fatality triggers.  Body recovery and autopsy.  Transport of the remains.  Investigations, internal and external.  Interviews.  Memorials.  CISM.  Tears, anguish, questions, shock. And we still had fires burning; they would burn until mid-October. 

*

Why do I love the Klamath so much, even still?  After all that death?  Helicopters falling from the sky, a good man burned alive, careers breaking like delicate glass, relationships ruined.  Even before all of that, all the heartbreak and doubts, the fear of phone calls in the night that stopped my heart, I felt a visceral connection.  And it doesn’t stop at the physical place of mountains and rivers but includes the people that went through those tragedies with me.  They are an integral part of that place for me as well.  We have those shared experiences that forever bind us to one another, probably the deepest friendships I have to this day.   That beautiful, wonderful, horrible, deadly place. I think it’s because part of me, a small piece of my soul, my spirit, walks those mountains with my co-workers and our dead brothers and sister.  The rest of me will join them there one day.  

 

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog.  While I am currently an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture, any opinions posted here are my own and should not be construed to represent the official position United States Government, Department of Agriculture, or the U.S. Forest Service.