Sensuous Memories of Wildfire

Fieldwork is a multi-sensed thing. When anthropologists sit down and write ethnographies, we include what we saw and heard, smelled and tasted, felt in our bodies and our minds, as inseparable and confounding as these feelings are. My fieldwork includes going and fighting wildfires with prisoners. On many fires, we are miles away from the big flames, or we are on a fire that is nearly contained. These fires are fun and smoky and tiring, but manageable in the ethnographic sense-- I can whip out my phone and take notes, ask questions, et cetera. But when I go on the line with them to do an initial attack on a fire (meaning we see a giant wall of flames and work immediately to put it out), I am not writing, I am barely thinking of anything but breathing and watching for shifts in the wind. Even 10 minutes after I get off the fireline, when I try to scribble down what I saw, I forget to write certain things down because I've seen so much that it overwhelms me.

Over the course of fieldwork, after each fire when I sit achingly down in my car to write my initial musings, I have come up with a system to make at least some sense of my thoughts. In those swirling, manically penned fieldnotes, I first write a descriptive summary of the fire event, and then I break down what I remember by my senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch. Finally, I add a "Body" category, which describes what I felt, not with my fingers and toes, but with my gut, what it was telling me. Fear. Thrill. Exhaustion. Things that emanate from within and through me. These are the hardest to explain but the most important in moving my writing forward.

Below is what I wrote about the fire this week. I've expanded on the summary a bit, fleshing out sentences to be full and flowing, but here is my fieldwork laid bare. 

9 p.m., Wednesday, May 25
I was just on the Ridge fire, which ballooned from 80 to 2,000 acres right in front of us, running up and down the hills straight towards the center of a military base and its residents. It was a fire that some compared to disastrous ones, where firefighters lost their lives, because of how quickly it went from textbook containment to out-of-control. Upon arrival to the fire, when it was small but moving fast, we got out in front of the blaze, which was started on one of the base's gun ranges with a .50 caliber bullet. We saw it moving towards us fast, and we worked even faster with drip torches and water to burn backwards towards it, so that when the fire got to us, it would have nothing left in its reach to burn. We wrapped around it, burning the fuel on the ground and running multiple miles to put out spot fires. After about 6 hours, just when we thought we had boxed out the fire and its movement, a tiny ember from a torching mesquite tree jumped the line we had created through burning, because the winds had kicked up to 45 mph, at the hottest and driest part of the day. It happened right at the witching hour. When demons come out to play. The ember lit two blades of dry grass, then 10, then exponentially grew. It jumped the line and we watched it explode. There was a moment of shaky calm, standing on a hilltop watching the fire move swiftly towards the town, when we convened with Incident Command, laughed at how useless the last 6 hours were, and got our new orders. The crew was tasked to run straight towards the fire, to chase it like you'd chase a dog with a propensity to run, who you watched wiggle free from its collar right before your eyes. The crew battled the fire's right flank, another crew got its left. For an hour the crew of 23 men toiled, steady but swiftly, spaced evenly at the edge of the black, digging line, spraying hoses, beating the lapping flames with their tools. To no avail. They got called off the direct attack-- it was failing, and moving faster towards civilization. They got the order to run. Each crewmember had logged 6 hours already, with 10 miles of furious paced hiking on their feet, 90 pounds each on their backs, smoky ash coating their mouths and eyes and ears. They were ordered to run further than the fire had reached, and to make one last attempt to burn backwards into the wall of flames. And they did. They burned with abandon. Before the fire had jumped the line, our back-burn was methodical. Now it was all guns blazing. Drip torches met dry earth, the winds whipped up, and flames were carried back towards the main fire. The smoke plume quadrupled in size, as trees and brush and grass and animals unable to run went up in flames. This time the wind favored Man. You could hear the demon shrieking its goodbye. The intentional burn met the runaway one, and the fire ceased. 10 hours later, within hundreds of feet of the backyards of the community that relied on these crews, it was done.

I had never seen a wildfire event like this up close. Every fire is different, and interestingly, this fire was not even close to the most intense thing these crewmembers have seen. This was manageable, if not risky and exhausting. At all times, the experienced guys knew exactly what was happening. Could see it coming, could see where the fire would go, and knew what to do. For me, clearly inexperienced, it was like watching a movie where everyone else had been privy to a pre-screening, and throughout the day I relied on them repeating the dialogue they had already heard. I relied on them indeed. I mirrored their bodies and their attitude and their wisdom and strength. What I saw and heard and felt was both my own and not my own. I was fighting wildfire, but not alone. Fieldwork remolds you; you are plastic, you become enmeshed with others. On the fireline, when your fieldwork becomes a battle, this is especially true.

Sight:

• The wall of flame. It was moving north, towards us. We were burning back towards it. I kept thinking "shouldn't we get out of its way?" I kept looking at other people's reactions to judge if I should panic. No one looked concerned. It was dark orange, unlike the flame we were putting down which was light orange. The flame wall was dark because trees were torching in its march forward, creating black smoke. 
• A family of four deer darted past us. 3 adults, one young stag. Their fur was slightly smoking, but they didn't look burnt. Maybe singed. Rabbits ran past us. A skunk was hauling ass. Faster than I ever knew a skunk could move. We all wished them luck.
• The air show. One command plane (who was looking down, telling us what the big fire was doing), 2 smaller helicopters dragging orange buckets of water, another plane dumping slurry (the red gashes that land on the ground, fire retardant), and then the big mama, the Chinook copter, carrying 2100 gallons of water. They were hovering over us constantly, zooming in and out. Now you see them, now you don't. 
• Smoke. Everything looks epic. A person walking towards you is normal, a person walking towards you with a giant blaze and an acre of black smoke behind them looks like an action movie poster. You lose your sight every 20 or so seconds, and you blink furiously to bring things back to focus. Everyone is trading tips on how to make it sting less. You just have to wait for your eyes to go numb.
• The shimmer. You know when it gets really hot outside, and you see the heat mirages rising off the pavement? That's what wildfire looks like, everywhere. Everything is a heat mirage, if you stare at one thing too long you start to feel queasy. It's like you're moving through a funhouse mirrored room, made out of flames.

Sound:

• A fire sounds like ten thousand things at once. The sound is the most overwhelming part. Every time a tree torches (meaning it goes up like a candle), it sounds like 10 million pieces of velcro being ripped at the same exact time. And then you add 2 trees, 3, 4...It gets loud. There are hums of the engine supplying you water to put out flames, the crackling of grass burning, the air show. Your ears hurt.
• Bullets and bombs. Yes, actually. Some of the crewmembers and Correctional Officers are veterans, and they were yelling at me above the roar of the flames and the engines and the Chinook above that this wasn't too far from a war zone. They would know. The fire was racing across 10 different military ranges, all of which had various explosive devices on the ground from previous training sessions. Bullets were popping every few minutes, and training bombs would explode (their blasts much less dangerous than actual bombs, but the sound was similar) every so often. Most of the time our backs were turned away from the fire, because we were looking for spot fires on the unburned grass ahead of us, so we would just hear bullets and bombs go off without seeing them. It was hard not to duck.
• Communication. MOVING. HOLDING. WIND SHIFT! SPOT FIRE! WATER! WE NEED WATER HERE! NOW! Laughter, a lot of it, somewhat maniacal, coming from all of us. Nervous laughter. Everyone saying "Oh shit," "Holy Shit," "It's getting INTENSE NOW." The radio is in a state of constant chatter, we are hearing what every crew, every engine, every helicopter is doing. Moments of calm, when we just hear the gurgle of the engine's hoses and the slow steady crackling of dry grass igniting. Everyone asking if everyone is OK.

Smell:

• Wildfire smells good. It smells wrong, it triggers something deep within your lizard brain that says This Isn't Right, but it also smells like raw power. Like a campfire, but mixed with gasoline and sweat. 
• Slurry rains down from airplanes and it smells acrid and bitter. You pray it doesn't land on you, because it's not good for your skin. Some guys love the smell of it, it means things got REAL. Most people say the smell makes them choke.
• The guys with drip torches get singed. Their hair burns, they have little patches missing where their clothes didn't cover them. They smell their own burned hair the rest of the day.

Taste: 

• At a certain point, your mouth is covered in ash. You swallow it. The shroud is wrapped around your mouth, the piece of fabric that attaches to your helmet and protects your neck and mouth and nose, which is a lifesaver but also doesn't let you blow your nose. Your nose is running like you're on a crazy ayahuasca trip, and you start inhaling the salt from your skin and the snot from your nose and the ash from the fire and the only reason it doesn't make you sick is because you aren't even paying attention to it.
• Your water, your sweet sweet water slung to your hips, has started to boil. It's worse when it's hotter outside, but the intense heat from the fire nullifies any fancy water storage unit you have. Your drink your boiling water, because you have to. It tastes faintly like smoke.

Touch:

• Your whole body is aching but you have no idea yet. You'll feel it later. Your skin has a flash burn, it looks like you fell asleep in the sun. Everyone is operating at probably 100 degrees, your blood feels hot and slightly sludgy. You keep drinking water. Your feet are starting to ache but you don't let yourself think that yet. You still have so many more miles to go. When you're done for the day, you take off your shoes and boots and compare blisters and burns. It's a game no one wants to win.
• The Chinook misdirected his water bucket and we got slammed with 2100 gallons of water. It was disgusting water, from some holding pond full of shit I don't even want to think of, but oh god, it felt so good. We all high-fived.
• Reassurances. The guys are constantly physically checking in with each other. They adjust each others packs. They high five or chest bump when they do something cool. They make each other look them in the eyes, to see that they are focused and hydrated. They make each other drink water. They check in with me too.

Body:

• My stomach flipped when I saw the wall of flames move towards us for the first time. One of the guys asked, "Are you OK?" And I said I was scared, a little. He said it was OK to be scared. I definitely felt a wave of nausea like I was going to puke, but I didn't. He stuck by me the whole time after that, and asked how I was doing every 10 minutes. 
• Tired. I can't sleep tonight. I am in a fire department full of 23 dudes and they are all passed out and snoring. They are full, they ate at Golden Corral which is the most amazing thing to watch. I think they pretty much demolish their food supply. But I can't sleep. I'm too amped. I need to sleep. But I keep seeing fire when I close my eyes.
• The demon. I had heard vaguely about this phenomenon, but this time I saw it. In each wildfire, a demon resides. You can never see it while you're fighting it. Only when you look back at your pictures do you see a shape in a flame. A head, like Edvard Munch's The Scream, reaching out towards the camera. We were flipping through my pictures after dinner, all nestled in our sleeping bags, and I saw it. Someone else noticed it. "She got the demon!" I did, I had captured it. Now I know that this is real.