On reaching the top of the ridge, I found a group of about twenty-five men standing or sitting in silence, watching the mountain on the other side of a small ravine. The whole side of the next ridge, which was only about eight hundred yards away, was completely in flame; we could feel the hot radiation on our faces. The fire on that side of the mountain had “crowned”. That meant that instead of burning quietly along the ground as before, the fire had got into the crown of the trees and had become a huge conflagration. Although it wasn’t overly windy, the immense heat created its own draft and fanned the flames into a fire storm. The fire was rolling up the mountain on the other side of the ravine, flames forty or fifty feet high, then falling away and rolling back down the slope. Moments later another huge tongue of flame would emerge to repeat the terrifying display, now licking even further up on the mountain side. From time to time, I would see bits of bark and tree branches flying out of the maelstrom closely followed half a second later by a loud boom as a tree, having been heated well past boiling point, exploded when the sap, now steam, had no other way to escape. It was mesmerising and I stood there transfixed for a few minutes, captivated by the extraordinary display in front of me.

While there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger, I began to think that this fire could perhaps find its way over to our side of the ravine and it might not be a good idea to stay here very long. We contacted our crew boss and were given permission to hike back up the ridge the way we came and back toward base camp.

It was quite a hike; we had walked down the ridge further than I had imagined. I was back in my montana hike mode and climbing at a nice steady pace. The climb took the better part of an hour, but I was in no particular hurry, I didn’t see any sign of the fire behind me so there didn’t seem to be any need to rush. I guess that wasn’t the case for everyone, and as I climbed steadily, I was occasionally overtaken by other men, breathing heavily, climbing rapidly and in earnest. The closer I got to bass camp the more exhausted fire fighters overtook me in their eagerness to out pace the fire which, although I could still see no sign of it below, must have moved over to the ridge we were on. I later discovered that the remainder of my crew had been among the ones who needed to hurry up the hill more quickly than they would have liked.

Not long after that I arrived at base camp to discover that, surprising, all was calm there. I didn’t get any further details, but although I believed we were higher than the fire below on the ridge, and it is well known that a fire likes to burn uphill, it didn’t seem to be presenting any danger to the camp.

The fire camp had become a large operation by now. I would guess upwards of two or three hundred people. There were lots of tents dotted around; for sleeping in and for use as command-and-control centres. There were also several cook tents to make meals for the men.

I have forgotton just how it came about but that energetic climbing and descending of mountains, all the while keeping a close eye on the fire, was losing its appeal. Some how I managed to talk myself onto the cooking crew. My first job was to break about three hundred eggs for the mornings breakfast. That was great fun and I quickly learned to crack eggs four at a time, two in each hand, mostly without breaking the yokes and without leaving too many shells behind – well not once I had got the hang of the technique anyway. The first few dozen? Well, a boy must learn somehow.

Working in the cook tent was great. Much more convenient of course but more importantly it didn’t involve all that hiking and hacking. I would get up very early in the morning and spend a few hours making sandwiches for the crews. This was done by laying out a whole loaf of white bread in two rows of slices and slapping a bit of butter on each slice: then going around dolloping a spoonful of jam onto the slices in the bottom row and a slick of peanut butter on the slices in the upper row. The two haves would then be slapped together, wrapped in a bit of waxed paper, and thrown then into a paper bag. I guess we also used lunch meat and mustard and perhaps other combinations, but the assembly method was always the same. Fortunately, we could eat what we liked from the provisions found in plentiful amounts in the cook tent.

While it looked like the fire was more or less contained from my observations on the first day, the flare up that I witnessed, and others caused the fire to take hold again and, in the end, we were there for eighteen days

Because we had to get up early to make the sandwiches and worked late into the evening to wash up and get ready for the morning, each shift was about 18 hours long. Well, that was just fine, as it still left eight hours for sleep and what else was there to do after all. The great thing was that we got paid by the hour. The rate of pay was a $1.85 an hour which was only just short of what I could have got in a sawmill at eighteen years old. It doesn’t sound like much now, but it was more than I had ever earned before. So, eighteen hours times eighteen days, and a quick thumbnail calculation reveals a cash-out total of nearly six hundred dollars. For an eighteen-year-old Montana kid in 1961, it was a fortune.

I must have had further finances stashed away because not long after that I went down to West Broadway on the way out of town, where for the last few weeks, a black 1952 MG TD with a red tartan soft top, had been parked next to a fruit stand with a for sale sign on it. My best buddy Mick already had one of these lovely classic cars, and I wanted one too. I think I paid seven or eight hundred dollars for it which was probably a bit overpriced, considering it had sat on that lot for some time. Nevertheless, it was a great little car and I thoroughly enjoyed driving it around for the next year and a half until I left home for the Army.

We found out later that a small professional native Indian crew had sadly been killed in general vicinity of the mountain side which I had watched burn so ferociously . Very tragic it was, and further proof of how dangerous and destructive forest fires can be. Perhaps it is worth mentioning here that forest fires have been with us for as long as we have had forests.

Sadly, we are now learning that climate change is making things worse and will continue to do so for many years to come.

<->