Most people haven't seen a forest fire up close and personal. So, I'm here to give you a glimpse as to what it looks like when the fire chases you out of the forest and into a "safety zone". We had been going to "burn out" along a dozer line when the flames came roaring upon us. Those flames are about 120 feet tall and you could feel the heat at that distance. Firefighting is very hard work and you develop a very close bonds with your fellow firefighters once you've spent a long, hot summer night in the trenches, knocking down the flames. You often do not know what is going on around the rest of the fire, knowing only that your portion of the line has held.

An ongoing drama was whether the pickup truck in the foreground was going to get burned, or not. One of the first firefighters on the scene parked his truck in the meadow, well away from the original fire. Unfortunately, he took his keys with him and no matter what we did, we couldn't move the truck farther from the oncoming flames. The paint did get a little blistered before the flames died down that night. I worked on this fire for a 30 hour shift but, it wasn't all that intense, compared to bigger fires. This one was fun