To the Hotshot Woman on the Fireline
Your crew passed mine in those early hours when it still seemed possible to stop the fire. You remember that time of day: when the inversion held us down in a smoky cup of stale air, slowing the fire’s movement; when the water in our bottles still held ice from the night before. The mountain was alive with yellow-shirted bodies at that hour, radios crackling with commands and observations as the night shift changed to morning. Those first steps through crackling pine needles were still easy, the shovel in my hand light. That morning, just like every morning, I had forgotten all the misery and terror of the day before; I thought today would be the day I felt like I belonged.
The forest was August-dry and the fire was stubborn. We had been assigned to this fire for seven days, and we had fourteen to go. We had spent days digging a three-foot-wide line through lodgepole pine forest, the rubbery roots and dense wood resisting the swings of our fire tools. The fire gleefully jumped our line in the afternoons, when the sun finally broke through and the wind worked itself up to a howl. The helicopters buzzed ineffectually overhead, silver streams of water doing little to calm the inferno. This was my life now, far removed from the simple job I had at the ranger station, a job where failure was not a possibility, where my fingernails were always clean, my uniform pressed and neat, my life under control. Although the men on the crew liked to lean on their tools and speculate about the next big fire, it seemed pointless to think about the future.
We stopped on a ridge for our crew boss to read the map and figure out where we needed to go. Grateful for the break, I squinted into the distance. Blue-tinged mountains sloped away as far as I could see. The whole world was this fire. Somewhere below us, unseen, flames moved. It seemed as though nothing we did could change what the fire decided to do.
“Hotshots,” someone whispered, as another crew approached. Hotshots were mythical creatures to me: élite firefighters who worked together all summer as a cohesive unit. They were sent to the most dangerous parts of the fire. In contrast, my crew had been pulled from the ranks of seasonal national park naturalists and trail workers; none of us knew each other and some of us knew little about fire at all. The men on my crew rhapsodized about joining a hotshot crew someday. They spit Red Man on the parched ground and said they were ready. They made it clear that our call-when-needed crew was only a stepping stone.
You were the only woman on your crew, and you were wearing the old-style Nomex shirt that showed you had been around a while. It was one of those butter-soft ones with hidden buttons that had been replaced later by the one I was wearing, scratchy and smelling of an unknown chemical. Your dark hair was captured in braids, and your boots were White’s, the expensive ones I couldn’t afford but lusted after. Your crew had matching hardhats, unlike our rainbow assortment of orange, blue, and red. You were the real thing.
Your crew passed me in single file, twenty men and one woman, faces so covered in black ash that the teeth shone bright white. As you passed, you looked at me and smiled. My heart leapt at that. I had been surrounded by aloof, skeptical men for days. They sought to shake the few women by hiking as fast as they could or loading us up with all of the chainsaw gas containers and extra tools, praying for us to drop. Already, one of the other women on the crew had broken down in tears and been unceremoniously sent back to fire camp. I sensed the men were waiting for me to break, too.
“I was new enough to firefighting that I was still getting used to the combination of suffering and adrenaline that would later be nearly impossible for me to quit.”
I was new enough to firefighting that I was still getting used to the combination of suffering and adrenaline that would later be nearly impossible for me to quit. Each shift was a proving ground, climbing on untrained legs toward a fire that could kill me, lugging unfamiliar tools with blistered hands. I couldn’t explain why I had chosen this, except that I believed I was climbing toward a different woman than the one I was. I was leaving behind the soft, fearful girl I had been, but I kept looking over my shoulder to see if she was gaining on me.
You hiked past, two 40-pound water bladder bags slung over your shoulders. I stopped to watch you as you moved out of sight. It was possible, then, to be a woman and a firefighter. In that moment, I both believed I could become you and worried I would not.
“Close the gap!” the crew boss yelled, and I hurried to keep up, squinting downslope in the direction you had gone. It would be another day just like the one before, sixteen hours of futile digging, furtive gulps of sun-warmed water from plastic canteens, stumbling back to fire camp to sleep fitfully under a yellow tarp. The fire would once again breach our line until the snow put it out. But though my pack was just as heavy as it had been before, it seemed lighter, and your smile stayed with me. I knew I could carry it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Emerick is the author of three books: The Geography of Water (University of Alaska Press, 2015), Fire in the Heart: A Memoir of Friendship, Loss and Wildfire (Arcade, 2017), and The Last Layer of the Ocean: Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska's Wild Coast (Oregon State University Press, April 2021). She lives in Northeast Oregon. You can find Mary’s writing on her website.
Read Mary’s “Behind the Essay” author interview in our newsletter.
Header photo by Matt Howard.