Memoirs, Volume Two

The Thirty Mile Fire

A couple of clicks and pokes on the keyboard and it was all sorted out. Work was found, the day was saved, and all would be ok. Of course I didn’t have the job yet, but felt like I was headed in the right direction and had that sparkling intuitive hit that things were going to work out.

That feeling is always at its highest, most tuned point when you are living on that edge-walking the razor, not taking up too much space. I was in that place, and for some time had been stumbling about on the last of my colones, that had once been quetzales that had morphed from pesos, exploded into cordobas, and then retreated back into dollars. A lot less dollars.

Funds were low, but adventure was still on the horizon. I gave my step dad the green light to sell my truck, and then started looking for a job. I wanted to stretch this trip as long, sticky, and gooey as was possible. A few quick calculations had me sorted out until May if I played my shabby cards right and didn’t get robbed and kidnapped again. Felt good about my chances and about the idea of fighting fires for the summer with the Forest Service. It was a world I had been on the periphery of before and always felt a strong pull towards. Fire! Pulaskis! Forests! Travel! Hazard Pay! It was a perfect realm to transition into after bouncing around Latin America for the past year.

By the time I crash landed in San Diego, I found out that there was only one National Forest that had any interest in me. It was the Wenatchee , buried deep in the heart of Washington State, and it sounded like Shangri-la. I found it on a map and without hesitation agreed to bus and train my way up to the northern woods for what I anticipated would be some good living, hard work, adventure, and hopefully some cash to fill my depleted treasure chest.

It was one of my first forays over the Cascades and onto their Eastern slopes. Everything changes as you transition from the wet western side of the mountains into the raid shadow and semi-desert country of Eastern Washington. Douglas firs turn into Ponderosa Pines. Big berry bushes are replaced by low shrubs and eventually sage as you head East. The air dries up, the horizon expands, and everything feels bigger and slower.

The Lake Wenatchee Fire center was just a hair’s edge on the Eastern side of the pass. Walking in the woods you’d see all of these trees and plants mixing and dancing about. Western red cedars and delicate maiden ferns competed for water, ran from the sun, and crawled deeper into the shadows. Life was spiraling towards the west and its water, and rambling for the East and its sun. I fell in love with all of it in the first few moments and did my best to adjust to the strange new world I was now entering.

In hindsight, it appears that I may have been going thru some culture shock. I had spent a year out of America. During that time, Gore lost to Bush, friends got married; a new millennium started, and for most, the wheels had just kept going round and round.

For me, that year had rocked my world often and hard. I had faced demons, climbed volcanoes and threw my heart into some big projects. It was a year of fierce leaping, falling, stumbling, and growing. I started out as a young naïve idealist, and grew sometimes by forced doses of miracle grow into something strong, something different. I had sailed to Cuba, been kidnapped in Costa Rica, and helped get a school built in Guatemala. I ran with Internationalists and spent long debaucherous nights debating life and exploring its madness. I have faint memories of solving some of the world’s greatest problems, and then losing the strands of thought in some late night bottle of Gallo. But the solutions were let out on some of those nights and I’m quite sure they still dance about the world in strange conversations in not so distant lands.

The bounce to my walk had changed, a different glow hung about my shoulders, and the world and all her madness were being filtered through a new set of lenses. I was riding the high ridge of good living and thought Id sail right into the fire fighting world with a seamless transition. I figured there would be fellow adventurer types gathering forces and heading out into the burning woods to see what we could see. It would be just like traveling in the distant lands of South America I imagined.

But the gears came to a screeching halt as I sat around the crew table that first day of work. I was definitely not in Kansas anymore, and had to sort through a few layers of bullshit before I realized where I had really landed. Most of the crew were kids from the backside of the Cascades. They were young, loved their off rode rigs, had Jesus, and jiggled about with nervous excitement as they contemplated summer love, money, and bunk life without parents around.

There were 20 of us and only a few exceptions to the rule. A couple of the crewmembers were from the west side, and had lived a bit. Our crews boss and second in command were both weathered fire dogs who seemed to know their shit. They were a bit older and had definitely been around the block, or the forest, or a burning bush a few times. I got a feeling that first day that this was going to be a long, strange summer.

I was assigned a bunk house with a couple of other federales. On the compound we had backcountry trail folks and a botany crew as well. I leaned towards the botany crew who we affectionately called “Hot Bots” on account of all the fire time they got. I spent time with them and found common ground in our mutual love for plants and stumbling about in the woods. Their scene was quite a contrast to the mad, macho world of the fire house and would later serve as a nurturing, protective force from the crazy hurricane that would soon engulf us that summer.

After settling in, sorting out my new digs, and passing the “pack test” I was starting to feel a tinge of comfort back in these states, and particularly in this state of being that I would be calling home for the next four months. I rolled with the flow of the day in those first few weeks: Physical Training (PT) in the morning, line cutting until lunch, then hiding out in the woods and playing hackey-sack with the crew until the day was over. I figured I could get used to this for a while.
But nothing lasts forever, or ever really feels stable. It’s all an illusion, and the world is constantly conspiring to teach me that lesson. In this case, the lesson came in the form of the most bad ass fire fighter I had ever met: Cary Stock. Cary was an old surfer from my neck of the woods, so I could relate to him. He had even spent time in the California Conservation Corps(CCC) a place that had been good to me. But besides that, he was one scary dude who made most of the young firefighters tremble in their squeaky new fire boots.

He always wore dark, wraparound sunglasses. Inside, outside, nighttime- all the time. You could never look into his eyes or get a sense of what he was thinking or who he was. He also had a tobacco chewing habit that put the most devout addict to shame. Every dip was a four finger one, and his dedication to the art was almost fanatical. On the grade he was always spraying thick, black splatterings of tobacco juice. Inside, he carried a gold spittoon that he spat in with the reverence of a true believer. The first time I saw him, he was making a presentation on the behavior of fire. It was a huge, well lit room. And in the front was this guy who looked like he’d walked out of some Mad Max meets Terminator film. He was a caricature in a lot of ways, but boy did he know his shit. He was a true fire wizard, and taught me some good lessons that summer.

I reluctantly “joined” his fire engine when he told me that someone from the hand crew that I called home the last few weeks had to come on to the truck. I told him I wasn’t interested, that I really wanted to work on the hand crew, get some experience and hopefully make a move for a hotshot crew late in the season or the following year. The hotshots were the second most elite wild land fire fighting group in the federal system. They were constantly in action and often went out of state on assignments. Every season they took on a couple of new guys towards the end of the season to give them a try out. I was banking on that.
But Cary told me he had hot shot connections, and would get me sorted in that direction if I joined forces with him. He also made it pretty clear that I was his guy and I really didn’t have much of a choice.

So the winds blew in that direction and I got taken for a ride. That was the start of a series of fateful twists, turns, bumps, and bruises that linger deep into this day.

Those brief weeks I spent with Cary on the engine were memorable. He worked us hard, loved doing elaborate physical trainings, and was obsessed with being ready for the ‘big one’. We walked old fires, analyzed the way trees moved to avoid the heat, and practiced laying hose in some pretty ridiculous terrain. We also got to make presentations to campers at the local state park with our own Smoky the Bear. I became the lead presenter and was notorious for making the lucky fool who volunteered to be Smoky, give the audience their money’s worth. I explained that Smoky had recently returned from a trip to Paris where he learned some new moves in modern dance, ballet, and of course the cabaret. The crowd got into it, and the reluctant volunteer could often be coerced into doing some ridiculous dance improvisation. But really, we were just killing time, waiting for the forest to dry out, the lightning to strike, and fire to call us into action.

Cary really wanted me to get some experience with fire, so it was his idea to bump me on the list of crewmembers for the next off district fire. He put me ahead of Liz, the other engine crewmember who had experience from the previous season.
A few days later we saw two huge columns of smoke erupting in the north. The Libby fire was starting to heat up and we all figured we’d be getting a call soon. “Pack your war bag!” was the order and we all stood by with excitement and anticipation. This was the first big fire of the season, and everyone was ready for some excitement.

The call came shortly after midnight. It wasn’t so much a wakeup call as it was a, get your stuff and let’s get going call. We met at 1:00 am at the firehouse, and then drove down to Leavenworth to rendezvous with the other crews. There was a bit of confusion in that first hour because Cary was supposed to be the supervisor of our crew. His name was up on the list, but no one could get through to him on the phone. Apparently, he got in a fight with his girlfriend that night and ripped the phone out of the wall in anger, or maybe to throw at her. Next up was Elreese Daniels, and another twist of fate played itself out.

We piled into a van and met up with the Leavenworth folks and a crew from the Naches Ranger station. Around 2:00am we sorted out who was going to be on which squad. As they rambled through the names and assignments, I was the only one not mentioned, and not assigned to a crew. Apparently, I wasn’t on the list…I was a last minute addition. That slip up sparked a conversation about what crew I should be on, and I got passed back and forth like a hot potato, until finally landing on with Thom Taylor and his squad. Another piece of the fate pie fell into play.

Confusion was in the air from the start, and a couple of hairs were already starting to dance on the back of my neck. ‘Who were these people? How did I get here? And where was I going?’ Were a few of the questions I was starting to ask, but I must have fallen asleep on the long drive to the Okanogan National Forest, because I never did find those answers.

When dawn peaked her red and oranges over the hill, we were in a ranger station parking lot being told we were not going to go fight the big Libby Fire. Instead, we were being rerouted to a smaller fire that had been started by a runaway campfire. The deflated air of our expectations nearly knocked over the forest supervisor who tilted back and forth on his heels as he explained the logistics to our slightly fatigued crew boss. We all figured we were getting screwed out of the big fire, which really meant the big bucks. We wanted a two week stay on this one, hoping to fill up our pockets with treasure and get some experience on the fire lines.

By the time we got on the little fire that would explode and come to be known as The Thirty Mile Fire, it was already starting to get warm. No one knew it at the time, but this day, July 10, would be the hottest and driest day of the fire season. It would also become singed into history and infamy before the sun would set again.
But it all started out simple and innocent enough. Our bosses met with the bosses that were on site and had been fighting the fire the previous night. We overheard bits and pieces of the conversation, and felt disappointed with the news. ‘The hot shot crew had ringed the fire the night before with line. The fires were small. There wasn’t much work left to do. The crew had got tired and was sleeping in the park down the road. Not much to worry about,’ were some of the snippets we overheard.
In the glorified paramilitary world of fire fighting, we waited obediently to be told by our supervisors what we were supposed to do. It went through a couple of cycles then finally fell on the shoulders of the Crew Boss in Training to give us the low down. His name was Pete, and he wore his arrogance on his sleeve. He tried to wing the briefing and was schooled by one of the veterans that was observing. Eventually it all got sorted out, and we were dealt our assignments from a crooked deck of cards that would soon be sending us all to the edge of the abyss, and a few unlucky ones over and into its oblivion.

The slow process of getting sorted out and jumping through the bureaucratic hurdles of federal fire fighting allowed the fire to warm up a bit, and start getting active. By the time we had received our line assignments, the flames were licking up from the ground and starting to crawl into the thicker brush.

We crossed an old growth Douglas fir that had fallen across the creek a few seasons before, and immediately got to work doing what we had been practicing for weeks. We were cutting line, and it was amazing! I was assigned to the saw and would take turns running it with a young buck named Nick Dreis. Our job was to cut through the thick brush and carve out a line that the rest of the crew could cut down to mineral soil.

This kind of firefighting was real simple, real logical. If you could remove burnable materials from the path of the fire, it would burn itself out when it hit the soil and couldn’t find anything to burn. Of course, there were a few dozen other factors that played out in the mix, but on a grunt fire fighter level, it was simple. But not easy.

We ripped through the thick tangles of alder, vine maple, small Doug firs, and a variety of berry bushes. We were in the flood plain, and everything seemed to be growing and competing for life here. As we tore at the brush with the saw, the flames of the fire got closer and closer. At its most glorious moments, we were just a few feet away from the creeping fire. It was still morning, and we all thought that we could contain this little fire.

As Nick tore through the brush with his saw, I would frantically clear the brush he just cut before the fire could gobble it up. While I waited for his cutting, I would swing my Pulaski to help sketch out a line for the rest of the crew to tie into.
Behind us, our squad was lined out with shovels, pulaskis, and a few McClouds to knock down and cut out brush that was in the path of the fire. Everyone was spread out, keeping their dimes, and making good progress.

Our loose plan was to tie into the other squad and complete a circle of line around the fire. I could hear the shouts of other crew members and bosses over the coughing wale of the saw periodically. At one point, Nick and I got pretty far ahead of the crew. We were taking a moment to rest, dehydrate and fuel up the saw. We were finally taking a few minutes to slow down and appreciate what was happening, what we were doing. We were stoked! The fire was being tamed, our crew was working well, and we were celebrating our first fire together. Then we heard a booming sound, and a tree next to us was completely engulfed in flames. The tree was at least 50 feet from the flames, but totally on fire.

Tom yelled, “Run to the river!” to us and he sounded panicked. We gathered our gear and headed in that direction. Thom thought the fire might engulf us at that point, but it stayed isolated in that tree. Apparently everything has a flash point, a temperature at which it will erupt into flames, regardless of flame contact. Fire fighters call this phenomenon “candling”. It was an extraordinary sight.
Eventually we rallied our way back to the squad and tied back into the line work. At this point, the noise on the supervisor’s radios started squeaking and popping. It was getting hot. The fire was gaining momentum. Something wasn’t right. But we kept hacking our way through the brush, trying to tie in with the other Tom’s squad. We could see and hear them now, and figured we were close.

Pete came running through the brush from where we thought the other squad was and barked a bunch of orders to our squad boss. Thom took the saw from Nick and went to town on the brush. I stayed by his side and threw his brush as he frantically sawed his way to the other squad.

When the line was connected, the rest of the crew cut through any remaining piece of shrubbery or wood debris and linked up with the other squad. The assignment was complete, but we all knew it wouldn’t hold. By this time the flame lengths were three feet high, the wind was picking up, and everything was drying up and raring to explode.

Thom sent a few folks to walk the line and check for spot fires. Spot fires are started from embers that the fire, with assistance from the wind, sends over the line. When a fire is really ripping, these embers can travel miles over a line and start a spot fire deep into safe country. Our crewmembers reported multiple spots in the few minutes that our line had lived. It was hopeless. The line would not hold.

Pete gave the command to get back to the lunch spot. We had lost the fire. As we walked our line back to the creek, I heard a rumbling, thumping sound that I thought might be more trees candling. I stopped in my tracks and peered into the swirling smoke. A helicopter with a 250 gallon water bucket was making one of its first drops on the fire. It was a few hours late, and was now just a symbolic backdrop to the once simple and innocent runaway camp fire. But it sure was cool to watch it do its magic.

When we rallied back at the vans, fatigue was dripping from everyone’s pores. I had drunk four quarts of water and was itching for more. Most people collapsed into sweaty piles, stuffed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into their mouths and passed out.

I couldn’t sleep. As the afternoon sun was peaking into its hottest moments, the fire activity was spectacular. What had been a creepy crawling campfire was now a massive canopy fire ripping its way through the trees and up the canyon. It was roaring! Branches were breaking, and everything was heating up. I wandered over to the creek to watch the show and take a few photos. I was mesmerized by the twisting, turning, and exploding fire. But before I could surrender into the awe that was now exploding in front of me, I heard someone calling my name. It was Thom, and it didn’t sound like good news.

Two fire engines that had been called in for support in the morning were now engaging the fire up canyon. Someone, in some high up place had made a plan to hold the fire to one side of the canyon. The idea was to use the dirt road as a giant fire line and make sure the fire did not jump the line and burn up the other side of the canyon. So, the engines were off fighting the spots and had called for support from the hand crews.

The Forest Service wild land firefighting system is set up just like the military. They use helicopters and airplanes. Have Special Forces that jump out of airplanes and engage the fire in remote, hostile territory. They move people and machinery around like chess pieces as they hone their attention on “defeating” the fire. We were those pieces, and I could feel the not so gentle hands of the man behind the curtain pushing me forward.

I was a fatigued mess of a firefighter at that point, and just went where the orders told me to go. With urgency, we were rounded up from our lunch spot, loaded into a van, and sped off up a road to join forces with the tanks(fire trucks) that were blasting(watering) their way through the fire.

Embers from the east side of the canyon were starting spot fires on the other side. Our job was to find them, cut line around them, and put them out with water from the trucks. In the last of the calm moments, I recall cutting line around one of these little spot fires and looking down at the ground. I noticed a fire shelter on the ground and assumed it was from the girl next to me. “Your shelter fell out of your pack,” I commented. She looked at me and said, “No that’s your shelter.” Sure enough it was, and I felt like an idiot. She helped me get the shelter back in my pack and reattached the not so sure piece of Velcro that was flapping about, uncommitted in the breeze.

Sixty seconds later I heard Elreese on the radio and someone speaking urgently to him. “Get out! The road is burning over! Get out!” Then I heard Thom’s booming voice, “Run! Get the fuck back to the van. Run!” And off we went.

We threw saws, pulaskis, and packs on the floor then twisted and turned our way through them as the van sped off. Driving past another squad, I remember Thom yelling something like, “Run. Double-time.” I don’t know why we didn’t pick them up. But it wouldn’t have made a difference.

We ran into a wall of flame that had gobbled up the road and was chomping its way for us. Elreese maneuvered the van into the quickest 8 point turn I’d ever seen. We were on a narrow dirt road with an oversized van going the wrong way towards a wall of flame. The heat bit into the van as we edged up against the flames in the mad dash to reverse direction. I remember someone saying that we were all going to die-I took a photo.

When we finally got our direction sorted out, the crew breathed a sigh of relief, picked up the other squad and made our way to what we thought would be safety. But Elreese kept slowing down, like he was looking for something. Someone near me said, “Let’s drive out of here. Take this road and get us back to the other squads.” At that point the news that we were on a dead end road somehow trickled its way to the back of the van, and shut us up into a clammy silence.

We trolled that back road, stopping frequently, hoping to find a calm place to wait out the approaching fire storm that we all knew wasn’t far behind us. What we found was a turn in the road, a small beach, and a rocky scree slope. According to the eye in the sky that was flying over us and the man behind the wheel, this was that safe place, that harbor where we could wait out and hopefully just watch the fire pass.
Before we even stepped out of the van it seemed that the whole thing had broken down. There was a reluctant crew boss and two squad leaders amongst us. It seemed that all three of them had different ideas, and no one was sure who to follow. I leaned into the shadows a bit, took a few steps out of my body and watched the whole scene unravel.

Thom Taylor, my squad leader looked at the trees around us, and suggested we take a saw to them. Elreese, the crew boss, waived it off as overreacting. He tried to reassure everyone that we would be fine here. He reminded us all of his time fighting the Yellowstone fires of 1988 and how they had been trapped and got to watch the fire burn right by them, but not over them. It was just like that time he suggested.

But we all knew he was wrong. Most of us were rookies, many were teenagers, but all knew that the shit was going to hit the fan. As the revelation of our predicament started to hit rock bottom, each person spun off into their world of survival distraction. Some clumped up with friends, others gathered around Tom Craven, the squad boss from Naches, and some just stared at the fire column that was growing and heading our way.

I looked up the scree slope to where my squad boss had positioned himself and wondered what he was doing up there. From the little I knew of him, I had a sense that he knew fire and that perhaps he was in the right place. I glanced at the other Tom, and some of the young crew that gathered about him like he was some messiah. They sat on some boulders above the rocks and I heard him say with calm assurance, “Worry when I start to worry. I’m not worrying right now.” That was enough for me to know that those rocks weren’t where I wanted to be. As I contemplated place and time, I felt a panic welling up from the heels of my boot up to my throat and beyond. Things were going to get worse. I had to find a place to hunker down. My gut was saying stay on the road, just sit down and wait. However, my most comforting moments come from when I’m on the move-walking, biking, bussing…I just need to move sometimes.

Anywhere but the road would have killed me so I looked for an anchor. I patted myself down, looking for my safety blanket that’s never too far away. I found a small journal I had used to take fire notes on in my shirt pocket. I got a pen out and went back in time. I wanted to write about how this had all happened, when it had started, how all this madness had come to be. When the pen hit the paper, scraggly words poured the story out. But time was racing against me, and before I could sink my teeth into the prologue, black embers started falling from the sky. They had traveled almost a mile from the fire that was starting to pick up speed and ferocity as it tore its way up the canyon. I started jumping through time, hoping that my writing would catch up to the present and somehow document the intensity that was unfolding all about me.

By the time I got to the now, the sound of burnt fir needles bouncing off of hard hats sounded like hail on a cold northwest morning. Then a few glowing orange embers got mixed in the downpour and started burning my hands and neck. I brushed them aside at first and continued to write into the now time. I looked up and saw the sky darken, and the glowing embers transform into a fiery snow. It was almost beautiful.
As the sky went from black to red, I drained the last few words I could from my head to the pen to the paper, and put it back into my pocket. I took a few photos, hunkered down next to a couple of fellow firefighters, and waited for the brunt of the storm to hit us.

A moment before I wrapped myself into my fire shelter, I saw spot fires starting down canyon. Those floating embers were lighting up piles of dry branches and leaves. Soon the slopes were dotted by what seemed like dozens of campfires. The last human voice I heard before going into my shelter was Elreese’s as he said to get our shelters out and cover our buddies. The sky was falling fire, and I briefly covered both him and myself with a shelter. It was a futile and rather stupid idea that lasted about 15 seconds.

Super heated air and gases hit us with the force of a small tornado and convinced me that it would be better to die in my shelter then sharing it like a beach blanket with my boss. I struggled from a prone position to get into my shelter-something I had never trained to do. Getting up seemed like an insane idea. Just a few feet of elevation seemed to be the difference between life and death, and I wanted to cling on to life for at least a few more moments. Had a few things I needed to say.
By the time I had twisted and wiggled myself into the shelter, flame lengths of over 200’ were just across the small river and bending their way over us. Before they struck, hurricane winds hit us. Trees and branches came crashing down all about us. It felt as if the gods from above were reaching down trying to pull off my shelter. I spread myself out and channeled every ounce of muscle strength I had to hold my shelter down.

When the winds passed, I heard the first screams from above and knew that death was in our camp. As I struggled to get my shelter fully spread out, I started hyperventilating. The fire was on us now, and two bushes outside my shelter caught on fire. They were burning my elbows, and all I could see were specks of orange flame glowing through the pin holes of my shelter. As I gasped for air, I felt my insides starting to burn. I realized this is how you die from a fire. You burn from the insides first, before the flames ever get to your skin.

The air was too hot in my shelter. I knew that I would die if I kept breathing the way I was breathing, and understood that the mix of heat and gases in the air was set on killing a few of us. I could still hear an occasional cry from above and from a few of the shelters around me as the fire raged on all around us.

When I felt the presence of death in my own shelter an epic argument began. I screamed silently into that dark air, that dark place, that dark feeling, “It’s not my time death! I have things I’m supposed to do.” I argued. I screamed. I cried. As the darkness grew deeper, my argument changed. I thought of my dad and step mom and how they had just lost her father. I figured that two deaths in such a short time were too harsh, too unfair for them. I thought I had a couple of good arguments, but still felt its presence in my shelter. I knew I was breathing too deep, and that I was arched to high above the ground.

So I went to the dirt for air, hoping to find something cooler, something that might chase death out of my shelter. It still wasn’t cool enough. I dug my hands into the dirt road, desperately trying to dig deeper, to find cooler air. My nails broke and my lungs kept burning. Then after a long stretch and wiggle about, I found my leatherman, opened it up to the pliers and started digging deep into the earth. After a few jabs, I would cup the hole with both hands and take a breath of the earthy, cool air. I dug and breathed, dug and breathed. Somewhere along the way death left, and the fire burned over us and continue its rage up the canyon. After what seemed like hours, I heard a voice commanding us to jump into the river.

I had been wedged between the thin veil of life and death for some time now, and felt it was hard to snap out of the rhythm that had just saved my life. I was in shock, but had enough sense to question if leaving the safety of our shelters made sense. By the time I staggered out of my twisted and burned shelter, I watched the last of my crew jump over a burning log into a small channel of the river. As I untangled myself, the two civilians that had been trapped with us, asked if I was ok. I think I nodded and staggered with them to the burning log. I remember watching them both go over and especially remember the woman placing her hands into the flames as she propelled her body over the log. I was the last one into the river.
Its icy contrast seemed the perfect remedy to the firestorm that had just torn through us. There was a sense of joy, survivors bliss in the air. People were laughing, a few jokes were floating about and everything seemed good until Thom’s sober voice shut us up and started a role call. We were missing some people and that quieted down the jokes.

At this point I was sharing my shelter with Rebecca who had giver hers up to the civilians. We were all still hunkering under the shelters, unsure of the air around us, and if the fire would be making another run. As the somber reality that some of us were unaccounted for, we had time to feel the icy waters that were soon bringing on the first stages of hypothermia.

I suggested to Rebecca that we embrace one another to keep ourselves warm. She had been burned on half of her body and started complaining about the burns and panicking about her friends that were missing. To comfort her and my own uneasiness around the instability of our situation, I started telling her the story of Ernest Shackelton and The Endurance.

When I was working for the Alaska State Parks, I remember one of my cold weather survival trainings. It consisted of my boss telling us the story of The Endurance. His point was, if you want to live, you can live. He had all kinds of evidence that suggested people survived because they really, really wanted to. It was all about will power, and it left its mark, its memory on me.

So, I started telling her the story of the Endurance, and I could tell it was working. She calmed down a bit and started listening to my teeth chattering rendition. I rambled on until the chattering of my teeth and the deep desperate breaths I was gasping overcame my ability to make consistent sounds come out of my mouth. Shortly after that, Thom commanded us all to get out of the river and head up to the small beach that ran parallel with the river.

Within a few moments of getting out of the water, we heard the eerie crunching and crackling of a large tree branch breaking off and watched it fall into the water where half the crew had just been. A 30 foot section of an ancient tree had broken off and the rest of it was leaning our way. It was still on fire and didn’t look like it had much life in it before it would fall. We started shuffling about to safer ground until we heard a loud Boom! Then another, Boom! It sounded like bombs were exploding. We looked behind us and saw the civilian’s truck engulfed in flames. Two of the tires had just exploded, and after a few seconds the other two went off.

One of the bosses said something about turning our backs to the potentially exploding truck and covering our backsides with our shelters. I think the theory was that it would be better to get exploding shrapnel in our backsides rather than front sides. It made sense. However, we had to turn our backs on the leaning, breaking, engulfed in fire old growth tree as well. Rebecca and I were still sharing the shelter, and crept up to the edge of the river. I suggested we jump into the river and take our chances floating through the unknown, rather than wait for a tree to fall onto us or a truck to explode into us. Just as she was warming up to the idea, we were rescued.

Out of the lingering grey smoke that still clung to the road and cracked boulders, we heard voices, then saw the bright helmets and yellow fire shirts of the Eniat Hot Shots poking their way towards us.

Ever since word of our entrapment had reached the crews on the other side of the fire, a rescue team had been logging their way to us. The fire swept through the canyon like a hurricane. It uprooted hundreds of trees, threw them all about, and sprayed them across the road. The rescue crew had to cut dozens of trees to drive their way into us. It took an hour and a half before they reached us, but their timing was impeccable.

Just as I was readying myself for a plunge into the river, into the unknown, I heard them shouting from the road. Their voices knocked us all out of a drunken stupor of hopelessness and inspired us to stagger our way back onto the road. Actions and words blurred from there.

It was smoky. Everything was grey or black. Nothing seemed alive. There was commotion up near the rocks, and I could just barely make out some burnt silver of someone’s shelter. “It’s too hot. I can’t get up there!” someone shouted. Then we were directed to get into the van. I was one of the first ones in, and just about fell over this burning shell of a man who was in one of the first rows of seats. It was Jason and I swear his hair was still smoking. He held his hands out like a zombie, and had a blank stare stretched across his face. It was a strange scene that took a turn for the wicked, when I noticed his hands. Most of his skin, muscles and tendons hand melted off his hands. But they were still just barely attached, like melted cheese, hanging delicately from the bones.

As we piled into the rig, one of the Eniat Hotshots who was an EMT jumped in to attend to Jason and his wounds. Turned out that Jason was also an EMT and remembered from his training that he was probably in shock. He figured it was better to be in the van rather than the water. He seemed extremely calm and collected for someone who had just melted both of his hands down to the bone.

Once the crew was all bundled into the van we drove back to the other squads. I thought it would take us a long drive to get there, but it was just a few minutes. We were never that far away, though it felt like we were landing onto a different planet.

When we stumbled out of the van, it was like we were a different species from the crews that had avoided the entrapment. The people on the safe side of the fire just watched us from a distance. Then news of the deaths trickled our way. I remember people calling out names of the fire fighters that were lost, and breaking down into tears. Some folks had people to hold. Others stumbled off into the trees to be alone. I wandered off somewhere in a stupor and collapsed into hysterical tears until my body remembered that it was hypothermic and the icy cold water that was still lodged in my pockets began dripping back into my reality.

Alone, I went back to the van and dug through my war bag for some dry clothing. I bundled myself up, and went back into the woods. At some point I was intercepted by Pete, the crew boss in training. He had taken control again, and suggested that all of the survivors write down what had happened for the investigators. We were then told that we would have to wait for several hours before leaving the site.
Apparently the police had to come and verify that people had died or something like that.

I dug through my pack looking for something else to write on, since my trusty pocket journal was now soaked. I ripped a tattered brown grocery bag into small pieces, and started writing everything I could remember. ‘How did we get here? Why did this happen? Who were the people who died? What was it I felt in that shelter?’ were the first questions I tried to answer. It was the start of a scribble that went on for months, as the reality of what had happened and the cover up that was carefully being prepared and layered became clear.

I hunkered down in that mad world for as long as they would let me stay. I mounted my trusty steed of righteousness and charged repeatedly into bureaucracies, old boy networks, and dysfunctional macho man personality disorders. I won a few battles, and did manage to make my voice heard once or twice over the disturbing cacophony of Uncle Sam’s fire machine.

Despite threats and bribes from the Forest Service, I did everything I could think of to make sure the story got told correctly, changes in firefighter training occurred, and the families of the victims had someone they could talk to who wasn’t afraid of telling the whole truth.

I rode a wave that held me up as a hero, a villain, a turn coat, and a celebrity. I pissed off all the good old boy supervisors on my district, but was quietly supported by a collection of old fire wizards who wanted nothing more than the truth to be told, and significant changes in the fire system to be made.

My boss Cary covered for me and kept me on the clock as I took federal vehicles to secret meetings with members of the press to tell the whole story and share my photos. Calls came in from different parts of the western states from fire supervisors that encouraged me to keep telling the truth. Envelopes with photos and investigation reports showed up in the mail for me.

The feds pushed me on a teeter totter that propped me up with dream job offerings in the federal system and pushed me down with the threat of going to jail for not turning over photos I had taken of the fire. I rode it as long as they let me.
I called every family up who lost someone in that fire and gave them free access to me, to my memories, to my photos, to my writings. I had dinner with parents who lost their children way too soon, and many late night conversations.

When the fall rains finally put out the fire season, I was coincidentally the first fire fighter to get laid off. I took a few souvenirs, and ran as fast as I could for that greyhound bus back over to the west side of the cascades. The last thing I saw as we humped over the pass were a series of bridges burning brightly, which caused me to smile, and think to myself, ‘my work here is done.’

Special Note: The following words are what I actually wrote in the journal just before deploying my shelter. I had to stop mid-sentence, then returned to finish the writing after the fire had passed.

July 10, 2001
Blackened pine and fir needles are falling on our heads. We've been cut off from our escape road, backed into a dead-end road (needles and ash are bouncing off my shirt, off this notebook).
The roar of the fire is getting louder, louder. The column twisting, several fires joined, it sounds like a tidal wave is coming our way. The sun is a bloody red, the smoke dark and high. The falling nettles sound like hail on a cold Northwest morning. The wind rips through the canyon, I watch the top of trees swaying violently from the high winds that the fire is creating. It's changing and twisting all around us
The beach and the creek are our last stand; we may be jumping in soon.
I hear a chopper, or is that just the roar of the fire rapidly coming upon us It's changing, rolling, screaming!!
I feel the heat, I smell the smoke. The sun is free of the tall column, sending dusty rays our way through the haze. Its close now, its close now!!!
Rolling right by us now, just across the little creek, the creek that may end up saving our lives.
Here it comes. Again the sun is covered, bright orange, then yellow, then red.
There is a strange calm, coolness in the air amongst the crew. For the first time, we can see the flames. Its licking, its rolling, its alive, its screaming at us!!!
There's a spot fire in the rock scree, just above us.
And now it's gray, here comes the flame again. It's snow…

If I could finish off those moments, it would go something like this:

It's snowing fire. A snowstorm of burning red embers is falling on us. I brush red-hot embers from the back of my neck and hair. The noise and wind are so intense I can hear nothing from the crew.
I unfold my shelter without thinking, and within seconds find myself curled in the fetal position, thinking, `Oh my God, how did this happen?'
I began to hyperventilate, sucked in some hot air, felt like I was going to die, confronted death, argued with it over my life, heard screaming. I fought the urge to jump out of my shelter, and felt the winds trying to rip it off me.

Then I felt as if I were being pelted by a thousand snowballs as a barrage of embers, broken tree branches and ash pelted the shelter. It came in several intense waves and at one point I thought surely I would be dead before this was all over. I thought about my family and friends and got lost momentarily in desperation.
Then I got out my Leatherman, started digging a hole and focused on getting as low to the ground as possible to suck the cool air from the hole.

This kept me focused until I heard the call to run for the creek. I stumbled with my shelter through the smoke and heat, jumped over a flaming log, and met my crew in the cold icy waters of the Chewuch River. We redeployed our shelters and spent the next 30 minutes up to our neck in those waters, not sure of what was happening all about us. I shared my tent with a fellow firefighter, and we spent most of the time embraced, assuring each other that we would survive this.

Eventually we were told to get onto the beach, where we had about one minute to feel safe. Suddenly, the loud boom of tires exploding met us, and we gazed at the civilians' truck, which was engulfed in flames. The tires were exploding one by one. We all thought the truck was going to explode into us. We heard the breaking of a tree and watched half of a burning tree break and fall on top of the shelters we had just been deployed in.

We backed into the waters of the creek, expecting the rest of the flaming tree to fall on us, and the truck to explode into us at any moment. Just when we thought the shit was really going to hit the fan, a truck with several firefighters showed up and yelled at us to get into the van, and get the hell out of there. They had logged out the road, and cleared a safe evacuation for us.

Rutman's account ends there. He has returned to work, stationed at Lake Wenatchee, where his primary assignment is on an engine crew. He offers this epilogue.
The four firefighters we left out there will forever be a part of us. I tell this story so the public can understand and empathize, and so my fellow firefighters can better understand what they may have to confront. I plan on returning to my duties and fighting for more safety training so others don't meet the same fate as Karen, Jessica, Tom and Devin.


Apocalypse Alaska

“Shot me right through my side,’ the old weathered Eskimo man said, as he pointed to a gnarled bunch of scar tissue that matched his story. We were both waiting for a bus that would take us to the outskirts of Anchorage and beyond. My fellow traveler had been in Vietnam and was telling me a story about how his tour of duty ended. He had the horrific luck of being wounded, then evacuated onto a medical helicopter, then shot off of the gurney as they transported him to the chopper.

It was midday and last night’s drunk had just about drained itself out of his system. His eyes sparkled a bit as he told me the story, and I hung to each word like a passenger staring at a horrible wreck on the freeway. I was enthralled and disgusted as he showed me scars, and gave me details about various organs that were damaged and destroyed as bullets tore into his flesh.

All this was compounded by the fact that I had just spend eight days in the backcountry of Alaska building trails in the most gorgeous lands I had known. On my first foray back into civilization, I watched Saving Private Ryan in the theatre and felt like I had just landed and waded my way through the beaches of Normandy. Now I had skipped a few wars, and was tromping my way through the jungles of Vietnam with a bus mate. It was a ruff start that needed one more push to get me over the abyss of sensory overload.


Talkeetna Blue Grass festival?

Alaska explodes into 24 hour mad, camp-out, multi-day music celebrations in the summer. Its Grateful Dead meets Road Warrior, and if you are in the right head space, it can be extraordinary.

When I stumbled into the Talkeetna Blue Grass Festival after a couple of hitches out of Anchorage, I thought I had taken a wrong turn. Leather clad, bearded, Hells ‘Angels motorcycle warriors stood guard at the entrance, and soon I found out that they were the hosts of this so-called bluegrass event, that seemed to have more blue gas tingeing the air, then bluegrass music.

Chainsaws were ripping down trees in the parking lot to make room for more camping, more people, more booze, and more drugs.

I staggered through it all to find my trail crew who supposedly had arrived the day before. By the time I found them, it was too late. They were a day ahead of me on their debaucherous journey into the rabbit’s hole, and I felt a strange distance from them and the whole scene that was unfolding.

As the day faded into a night that never was, the energy shifted and went into a higher level of parking lot mayhem. Rockets were launched over head, music turned up, drinks poured faster, and everyone was smoking something.

I hung with my crew and made several half-assed attempts to meet them somewhere on their horizons. That road led to the dance floor, and a few valiant attempts to find a rhythm and connect with a different energy. The dance moves never came to me, but I did bounce into Shioban and her friend the lion lady-who my crew had discovered earlier. Shioban was all sparkles, glowing with vitality, life, beauty, and all the things that make you happy to be alive. I fell under her spell, but above her radar and stayed a bit longer then I should have.

When the music stopped, I staggered back to the crew camp under a late night haze of smoldering fireworks, blasting sound systems, coughing chainsaws, and a thousand conversations. I hit rock bottom before arriving at the camp, and decided I had to leave. It had to be around 3am and nothing was slowing down. I felt like I was about to implode from all the mayhem, the culture shock, and the day’s earlier events.
I sketched a quick note to my friends about a possible rendezvous site in Denali National Park, and hit the Parks Highway just as the rains began. Tricked by the light in the sky, I figured I could catch a hitch and get as far away from this strange place as possible.

After wandering an hour with no cars in site, I looked again at my watch and realized it was almost breakfast time. I was exhausted, in the middle of nowhere, and surrounded by deep, lush forest, that looked darker and scarier then I had remembered.

Intimidated by the unknown, I decided to play it safe and went to sleep in what I found out to be a road drainage ditch that paralleled the highway. I woke up a few hours later in the midst of a downpour and was caught up in a small river that flowed through and over what I had been calling my bed.

Everything was soaked, spirits were down, but an idea was percolating, and like the smell of coffee after a ruff night, tricked me into believing everything would be all right.

Just the year before, I had worked in the giant machinery of Aramark Industries, which was an 800 person operation that ran all the workings at Denali National Park. I had been a pizza slinger at Lynx Creek Pizzeria, and had a glimpse into how the gears worked, and how they could work for me.

So, I decided to put on my best game face, walk into human resources, and walk out with a job-which in my world, translated into a warm cabin and access to the all you can eat employee kitchen.

I didn’t need the job, or want the job, but I figured I could buy myself a few days rest and relief while my friends partied their gourds out down at the Hells’ Angels event.

House Keeping

I never thought of myself as the house keeping type. But, that was what was available, and somehow I made a convincing argument that I was their guy…and really the only guy. Within minutes, I was issued a cafeteria card, a cabin, and a uniform. I was back in action!

My first plans involved a major laundry load and a gorging at the employee cafeteria that involved copious amounts of salmon and halibut.

I found my employee cabin, and to my delight was told that my roommate was out of town for the next week. I had the place to myself, until I crossed paths again with Shioban and her friend the lioness.

They were twirling juggling sticks, and dancing in the sunshine when I saw them at the gates of the park. I fell in love again, and approached them with caution and a swirling sense of excitement. The stars were lining up and I had this feeling that something exciting was going to happen.

I queried them, cornered them, lassoed at least one of them, and before I knew it, I had two new roommates. I fed them and myself with my coveted employee id card and managed to avoid work for the first day with a couple of worn out excuses.

I holed up in bed with Shioban, and without saying much of a word, found myself caught up in the sweet web she had spun all about the place. The first night she landed in my bunk bed, with the lioness taking over the vacant roommate’s bed. The place was big enuff for four, and we reveled in it. When the lights finally went out, Shioban and I gravitated towards each other’s lips, and the beginning of my most memorable traveler’s romance. When she opened her legs, I went down on the sweetest, wettest pussy I had known up till that moment, and made her squirm with delight. The lioness woke up, cracked an eye my way, and smiled. I was in heaven.

The pounding on the door the next morning, wasn’t in the script I had been following. My new “boss” wanted to know why I hadn’t showed up to “work”. He didn’t realize I was just here on vacation, so I made up another excuse, told him to leave us alone, and shut the door on his way out.

I rustled a few more plates of food for me and my new housemates from the employee cafeteria, and waited for the good old boys from the south to rally themselves from the Bluegrass festival, and show up for the adventure that we had planned several weeks before.

Wal-Mart Rafts

It was a simple idea that at the time didn’t cause any of us to pause in the cautious reflection that I have since learned to practice. Atilla, our Hungarian leader, suggested we buy rubber rafts from Wal-Mart, reinforce them with duct tape, hike in the backside of Denali National Park, and raft a wild, glacier fed river out to the front side of the park. We had survived a few earlier trips, and were itching for a new adventure. Apparently, Atilla had got the idea, and a number of other ones from an old National Geographic magazine article that featured a couple of reckless adventurers that had done all kinds of crazy trips involving rafts that were much better then what Wal-Mart provided us with. Even with that gear, they had almost died a few times.

My tent mate Miles was from Alabama, and game for anything. He had three knives, the best manners I had ever seen (he said more Pleases and Thank Yous in one sentence that I did in a day), and was certifiably crazy. He had stabbed himself in the heart once before (bad mushroom trip?), and lived so deeply and madly in the moment, that you couldn’t help but get a buzz from him if you were standing nearby.
The rest of the boys were from Virginia, and had been recruited like me, by their old friend Atilla. We were a crack squad of idiot adventurers, high on Alaska, off from our parks job for eight days, and itching to spend some wild time in the national park-backdoor style.

By the time my trail crew showed up, my charm and luck with Aramark Industries had just about worn off. I managed to hole them up in my cabin and fill everyone’s bellies with one last fine meal from the employee cafeteria. My fifth time around with two plates must have tipped someone off, because the next knock that came on the door didn’t have any southern hospitality.

It was security, and my number was up. I had been fired and was given specific instructions on how my termination would be carried out.

The timing was good, so we decided to start our adventure then and there, and walked into the backcountry. Our packs were full, rafts were attached to the sides, and we had two lovely additions to our adventure party.

The girls had decided they liked what they saw, and were interested in an adventure as well. They planned to walk out the river while we rafted it. I was elated and found myself playing house (tent) with the beautiful Shioban every night. The lioness fell for our mighty leader Atilla, and off we all went into an adventure that had been sketchily planned out on a few pieces of scrap paper.

The boys were still sweating out the drunken world of Talkeetna, so the going was slow at first. Atilla found us a route into the backside of the park, circumnavigating the tight restrictions that the feds put on it. We spent several days bushwhacking through dense vegetation in the lower elevations. There were no trails, and our only guide was the river. We sang songs in honor of the grizzly and black bears that roamed this backcountry, leaving highways of paw prints in the muddy flats of the river. We figured if they knew we were heading their way, they’d get out of the way.

When we finally busted through the brush and into the high tundra, spirits were high. We had all suffered a number of scratches, bumps, and bruises as we tripped our way for days through the tangle of brush below us. Up in the high country was another world. The only thing that grew were the ankle high shrubs that Alaskans referred to as the Tundra. Most of the ground beneath their shallow roots was permanently frozen, leaving only a small amount of soil and minerals to hang to. The snows were epic, and fell year round. As far as the eye could see, were the huge, snow-capped, wind worn glaciated peaks of the Alaska Mountain Range. Denali was the crown jewel, and peaked above its comrades at a height just over 20,000 feet. It was gorgeous and we all fell in love with the change of scenery and the proximity of the next phase of our adventure.

I was lost in that moment until I noticed that my raft was no longer attached to my pack. I searched madly for it, thinking perhaps I had relocated it, or maybe it had just fallen off within eyesight. Frantically I scanned the grounds as far as I could see, hoping it would be visible. My mind flashed over the terrain from the previous days-the stumbling, the tripping, and the sticks that poked and scratched everything. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what had happened, and my stomach dropped out of my guts into the disappointing tangle below. I knew it was back there, way back there. Having no trail to follow, made the idea of a search party pretty ridiculous.

Naively, I had planned to raft out with my crew and didn’t bring a whole lot of food. We figured we would cover several days of walking in just a few hours of rapid river movement. I ached with sadness and regret, until I looked over at Shioban and her tangled blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, and big smile just for me. Things could be worse, I imagined and smiled back.

The Southern boys continued on with the mission, and I parted ways to walk out with the ladies. We trekked through the most gorgeous country, but really had no idea how far away we were from the park roads that would get us out. We combined our food, and realized that the rations were meager.

Peanut Butter Blues

The first night we shared a bag of top ramen, a few bits of chocolate, and the dusted remains of some stale trail mix that had lived on for one too many days. But the sex kept at least Shioban and me going and distracted from the evening pings and pains of hunger. We were in the midst of traveler’s love. We may not have been in love with each other, but we were certainly in love with the same moment together, and we loved those moments up to their fullest.

The next day we rode fumes, and arrived to another camp with even less grub to share. It was a miserable night that involved the splitting of two fig bars three ways. I felt like I had failed my comrades, since I had the least to share. I vowed to the gods that night, that I would always have extra food strategically placed in my pack.

On our third day of this adventure that was unraveling into a tragic-comedy, we came across a couple from Israel having a picnic by the river. We stumbled into their camp, put on our best charm, and were offered the most delicious bagels and peanut butter I had ever tasted. Savoring the sweet and crunchy yumminess of the peanut butter, I made another vow to the gods that I would never again be without peanut butter in the back country.

We found out from our new friends that were just a few miles from the road and a free bus ride back to the park entrance. On the bus ride out we saw 12 grizzly bears and the most magnificent grey wolf that had stopped on a ridge to admire the setting sun.

There wasn’t much of a rendezvous plan with the southern men, but we of course crossed paths with them again and had a chance to swap stories. They were all lucky to be alive, with only one out of four rafts surviving the adventure. The river they had attempted to ride was swift, cold, and dangerous in the all the mysterious ways rivers can be. Hidden strainers, massive boulders, and deep channels, were just a few of those mysteries that tempted their fate and swallowed their rafts. They too had spent much of the time walking their way out with limited food resources.

Outlaw

Lingering aches in our bellies inspired me to test the waters one last time with my employee food card. This time, however, we pushed the envelope a little too far. We were short for time, had to hitch our way back to Whittier, and knew every moment was precious. So, like a pack of confident cowboys, we walked our dusty selves confidently into the cafeteria, threw our packs in a corner, and took a table during the rush hour of lunch. I activated my card, filled up plates of food, and delivered them to my comrades until security showed up again.

By this time, I had become a known entity on the compound and was escorted out of the cafeteria by a firm grip on the shoulder by one of the security guards. Figuring I would be getting another warning and slap on the hand I played along with this new character. As we walked out, he got on his walkie-talkie and called for the police. I was being reported for criminal trespass and thievery, and this time no one was smiling.

I was in a jam, and when a moment of distraction caught my captor’s eyes, I wiggled free of the shoulder hold and ran as fast as I could back to a friend’s cabin where my trusty backpack awaited. I lost the security amongst the dozens of employee cabins, caught my breath, mounted my pack, and wired a message to my crew via a friend from the year before.

When the horizon appeared safe and clear, I made a run up the hill and landed safely at Lynx Creek Pizza. A firm bridge was still in place there, and I used it to fill my hands with a couple of slices of pizza before giving one last farewell hug to an adventure that had done me so well.

I found my travelling companions a few miles down the road and took my place in one of the most ridiculous hitchhiking scenarios I had ever seen. There were six dust crusted men and two gorgeous, though slightly faded woman all standing with thumbs in the air. Scattered about the road were large internal backpacks, piles of sticks, canteens, and few other random items strewn about. It was a scene, but this was Alaska, and it didn’t take too long for things to fall in place.

A few cars pulled over and broke the group into smaller pieces. We said farewells, made plans to meet up on the train back to Whittier, and started the long bumpy ride back to work. I stayed as close to Shioban as possible. Our ride dropped us off for the night along the Talkeetna River. I set my tent up, and had one last night with a woman who for many years burned bright and lived long in my heart.

She mounted me a little before dawn, her wild, almost dredded hair flying about, and tears streaming down her face. I thought I had hurt her, and tried to wipe the tears away. But her face turned to a smile, the tears rolled down to her breasts, dropped onto my face, as she told me not to fall in love with her. ‘This is just now,’ she said. ‘We will never meet again, just love this moment, this night with me.’ It was too late, she already had my heart; but I agreed to follow her instructions and loved her as long as I could that night, and for many lonely nights after we had parted.










Ghost Taxi

The lions of the Serengeti are no different than the bandits who lurk on the outskirts of airports and other transportation hubs in developing nations. They lurk in shadows, calculate the odds, and carefully watch the passer-bys. They pay close attention to who is sick, who is old, who is weak…and ultimately, who would be easiest to chase, tackle, and eat.

After a 24 hour mad dash from the burning highways of Quito, Ecuador to the sweat clogged streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, I became that sick, old, weak prey that came stumbling out of the airport doors at high noon. Any other day, any other airport and I would be navigating through public transportation and making my way into the city on local time. But, I was in a hurry. I had to meet my mom and step dad in Guatemala, which was three countries and a couple of days by bus from where I now stood. Every moment would be crucial as I mapped out the hopping of buses and border crossings that would consume my next 48 hours. If I did everything right, I would show up right on time at the airport in Guatemala with a “Welcome to Guatemala!” sign and hug.

To manifest this vision, I opted for the quickest, easiest, and first transport that appeared to me: a taxi. I figured this would get me straight to the bus terminal, and that much closer to Guatemala. When I jumped in, there was a driver and a woman sitting in the front passenger seat. They both seemed nice, so I relaxed a bit into the back seat. Immediately, we picked up another guy who sat next to me. He seemed well dressed and it all seemed to fit for the place and time.

As we puttered off with a full boat, I made a little chit chat, but was met mostly with icy stares and indifference. When we steered off the main road, I sensed, even through my fatigued and frayed wiring, that something was amiss here.

When I questioned the driver, the guy next to me explained to me that we were taking a “short cut” to avoid paying the toll charges on the main road. This helped me relax a few degrees back into the seat, but the feeling didn’t linger for long.
We got caught in traffic, somewhere on the outskirts of town. Peering about, I tried to analyze my surroundings and get a sense of the scene that was unraveling faster than I could decipher. Steel boxes and cracked windshields covered my immediate vision. I noticed the housing up on washed out hills. They were shanties that started out with concrete blocks and ended in tarps and cardboard boxes.

I questioned the driver again, but this time was met by fierce arguing amongst the crew of the cab. I just wanted to know where we were going and when we would be there. As their rapid fire and heated conversation blasted out the last bits of calm air in the cab, I started to get nervous.

“You know, you can just let me out here” I suggested. The response was a switch, and then a locking sound that came from the cockpit and ricocheted about the taxi. I noticed that there was no way to manually open my lock on account of some careful monkey wrenching that had been done.
My eyes darted about the cabin, searching for an angle, for an escape. I figured I could break a window, but then what. Maybe I could scream and inspire someone stuck in traffic to rescue me was another idea that passed through my cob webbed mind in the last seconds of traffic we sat in.

When the congestion thinned out, I knew matters were out of my hands. The crew continued to argue, sometimes yelling at one another as they took a few more fast slices onto roads that changed names faster than I could translate. When we crossed over from asphalt to dirt, I ventured a query into the stressed out environment. “Where was the bus station?” I naively asked. One of the companions, obviously enjoying the ruse, said we were approaching the back side of it where there was less traffic. I knew it was bullshit, took a deep breath, and steadied myself for something that all my spidey senses were telling me was going to be bad.

As the car came to a sudden halt, my smooth talking neighbor choked his hands around my neck in a move that was perfectly timed with the lady in the front. She leaned back, and pinned my arms to their side with an unexpected ferocity. The man who was slowly crushing my Adam’s apple with his thumbs said something along the line of, ‘give us all your money or we will kill you.’ As he said this, the third musketeer quickly patted me down in search of treasure and loot. He found my wallet immediately, but to his dismay, there was only a $20 bill and an Oregon driver’s license in it. Patting me down, he searched madly at first, then reluctantly as his hands crossed the southern line of my equatorial zone. His macho ways guided his previous steady hands into a not so thorough search of where he imagined a money belt might be resting.

Fortunately, the belt had slipped deeper south then either of us had expected. Coming up empty handed, he looked at me crossly. Quickly, I pointed to my over-loaded internal frame back pack, and explained that all the loot was in there. He glanced it over, and accepted the deflection without a fight.

When the pat down came to an end, another flurry of fast jabbing Spanish bounced and stabbed its way about the cabin, leaving me in the dark for most of the conversation.

The result was the speeding up of the car, the opening of my door, and four rough hands pushing me out of the moving vehicle.

I resisted the pushing hands, and bought myself a few seconds of think time. I anchored my ass into the seat, and lunged for the small backpack that I carried my essentials in. With one hand countering the push, I put up a decent battle for the bag that held my South American journals and five rolls of slide film I had taken during months of high living and adventuring. The cargo was special, and I fought hard. The strangler had two hands available and once he jumped into the battle, I knew I couldn’t win.

But, he was distracted, and in a flash of what was probably my most brilliant moment during this whole mess, I let go of the bag, grabbed my passport and got pushed out of the now coasting vehicle.

Placing my left foot out first, I was quickly tripped up, pushed out, and run over. As the wheel rolled over my foot, I wiggled out of the loose laces, and managed to hobble out on one foot as the car ran over my left-boot.

When the dust had settled, I was on the ground, and quickly lacing up the slightly deformed boot. Like some mad hyena, my eyes darted about looking for something to smash that car with. I found two rocks, swiped them up, and ran like a lunatic after the now speeding car. I ached for a clear shot, and wanted to break the windows and anything else I could get in my aim.

The dirt road abruptly teed into an asphalt road, and the now obvious ghost taxi roared off. I panted my way to the edge, hoping to get off at least one shot. But, the madness had worn off just enough for logic to rain in on me, and give up at least one pipe dream. This of course, made room for another.

At the junction, a man sat on an idling motorcycle. I approached him, carefully dropped the rocks, and explained to him what had just happened. I tried to hire him into being my driver on what would be an epic crusade of justice. I picked up the rocks and explained to him that he could get me close to the car, and I would throw rocks at it. Of course, we would knock the car off the road, and tear into it like a pack of wolves hungry for revenge. I would give him some money, or at least an opportunity at some glory or something like that. He looked at me like I had just escaped from an institution, snapped a quick “No!” and buzzed off on his steel ride before I could counter-offer. I watched the ghost taxi fade off into the horizon, and what could have been my hero steering his ride in the opposite direction.

I calculated a variety of scenarios as I kicked dust, pulled out my hair, jumped up in the air, and slapped myself about in frustration and self-loathing. I could report the incident to the police. I could go to the embassy. I could buy a gun, and hunt down the ghost taxi. Or…I could just let it go. A few rounds on the merry go round of logic made it pretty obvious, so off I went to go find my mom.

I dug into my pockets, checked my money belt, and made plans to get out of these funky outskirts of town before the sunset. I hopped a city bus, explained I had no money to pay, and started a rocky love affair with the goodness of human beings one strange event at a time.

Within 24 hours, I had purchased a new backpack, some underwear and socks, and most importantly, a journal. I spent long hours bouncing through Central America, writing, and thinking about life and all of her surprises. I was a day and night behind schedule, and several sketchy border crossings away from meeting up with the folks, at what would now be our Plan B Rendezvous Site.

About half way through the trip, I found myself again at the crossroads of faith in humanity. Through a miscalculation, or perhaps my subconscious yearning for danger, I arrived late at the border crossing between Honduras and El Salvador. The hot night dripped with danger, as I gingerly stepped my way across the bridge that separated these two counties. During the day, this border would be steaming with people and action. I would pay a few cents for a bike carriage ride, and be off on another portion of the trip. But, at night, the whole thing comes to a grinding halt. The lights are out, the bugs are on, and the glaring eyes I see in the shadows, unfortunately are not crocodiles.

My wits were already pretty worn down, and I could sense that once again I was that wounded, old animal; hobbling about in the lightest part of the night, acutely aware that there were several predators lurking in the shadows with much better eye site then mine. And sharper teeth.

With nothing much left to lose, I figured a late night hitch couldn’t be
much worse than the fate that was lounging about in the shadows. I stuck out my thumb like so many times before, said a quick prayer to the gods and left it up to Zeus and his fickle temper once again.

That ride got my out of a jam, into another, and full of pupusas before it was all said and done. He was a nice guy, who may have had the wrong idea and perhaps intention. I flared out my most macho heterosexual signals and scents, and the scene unraveled under the safe lights of a pupusaria instead of a destination of his choosing-which was offered.

With a full belly and the easing of sexual tension through good conversation, communication, and food; my new friend guided me towards a safe hotel to spend the night in, and the promise of a friendship for life. I accepted that offer, and recharged my batteries for one last long push into Guatemala City and the search for my mother and step dad.