I sincerely apologize for the length of time between this post and the first part of the series. Juggling fire & creative work can be difficult sometimes.

So much has happened since we last touched base in June. Many friendships & new bonds have been established. An incredible patchwork of those on the home district & others across my Forest.

In July, I had the privilege of joining a type 2 throw-together crew for a two-week assignment to Montana. These temporary crews are a 20-person handcrew with a mix of individuals from each district on the forest. In our case, with three different districts, 6-7 folks from each area were chosen to go.

Type 2 throw-together crews are great for two things: training and camaraderie. We needed to give more seasonals an opportunity to gain experience in a squad boss/firefighter type 1 role while giving the permanent employees experience obtaining their crew boss qualification. The second is what I’d like to focus on. I feel SO much more connected to the other districts on the forest after this assignment.

The crew boss trainee did a great job mixing everybody up & facilitating an atmosphere of camaraderie.

It can be easy to get comfortable in this job, not having to learn any new names or branching out from your original district. And it’s really refreshing to “get off district” to see more beautiful places, meet new people & experience different ways of doing things.

Throwing a hodgepodge group of firefighters together is an amazing social experiment where everyone can win. Not only do you gain friendships, but it’s great for building bonds between districts for better firefighting efforts. Often districts help each other out with prescribed burns & fires. Seeing a familiar face can make the difference between an operation going well & going great.

During the day, we ran chainsaws preparing a dozer line & road for a future burnout operation. Over the next two weeks, our twenty-person crew cut a 30-60ft buffer between the line & where the flames would be, making it easier to hold if it were to burn or be lit on fire. Each day, we ran 4-6 chainsaws for upwards of 8 hours a day.

It’s an intimate thing to cut with another individual, called a swamper. You’re working in very close quarters with a spinning blade of razor sharp teeth. Often working mere inches away to give the sawyer better visibility. Once you throw in steep slopes & poor footing, it’s a real game of trust. We’re used to cutting with one person all year (at least on our handcrew back home) so changing that up & working with others can be an interesting adjustment. For the first few days, we took things really slow, often with swampers working at a further distance from the saw for safety.

As the days went on, each sawyer/swamper team picked up the pace & got more comfortable with themselves & the terrain upon which they were working. By the end of the roll, we’d prepped nearly 3 miles of line & had a great flow going.

In the evenings, we’d find a body of water to swim in & it was a great opportunity to bond further. Something changes after you’re “off the clock” & everyone’s guard comes down a bit. Swimming, camping out, telling stories, drinking coffee in the morning all became normal for us during this roll. It was really refreshing to engage with such a wide range of individuals. Each person had a completely different circle of friends, hobbies, stories, life experiences. Stories were abundant. Conversations were amazing. Also great for swapping musical tastes. (You learn & potentially become annoyed with your own crew’s musical patterns pretty quickly.)

In addition to the Type II crew, I did a two week roll with our helitack crew, which will only strengthen the bond between our district & one of our most useful firefighting tools: the helicopter & the firefighters who staff it!

All in all, I had an amazing time. I feel like I have friends all over the forest now. It’s less like an island & more interconnected. I’m excited to fight fires with them. And it’s especially nice when you’re brand new to an area & don’t have the luxury of growing up with some of these folks. Because eventually your paths would have crossed, but it’s a lot easier when an opportunity such as this forces the connection sooner rather than later. And now, in addition to the folks from my district I’ve had the pleasure of working with, I have upwards of 30 more new friends.