“Once a Year the West was Burning.”
Bitterroot IHC crew carrier:
My home for six months out of the year.
What I learned about yoga by fighting wildfires.
Make no bones about it, I thought I was a badass.
But in my defense, carrying a 30-pound pack and a 35-pound chainsaw around the woods all summer cutting fire line, e.g., a dirt path designed to deprive the fire of fuel, in some of the steepest, nastiest parts of the United States from Alaska to Florida while the forest burns all around you can wreak havoc with anyone’s ego. Let alone a silly little man like myself.
As the media alights with the fires currently tearing across the landscape, I am reflecting on what I garnered from my experience on the front lines. I worked for the federal government from 2003 until 2010 as a wildland firefighter. Six out of those seven years, I was part of the “elite” crews known as Hotshots.
Inevitably, the thought now crossing your mind is, “Oh, you jumped out of planes.”
My standard answer is, “No, I worked for a living. You’re thinking of Smokejumpers.”
But, all inside joking aside, Smokejumpers and Hotshots are really two sides of the same coin. Both are classified as National Type 1 resources by the United States Forest Service which means that the individuals who occupy these roles are available to travel anywhere across the country whenever the need may arise to combat any sort of national emergency. More often than not, these emergencies are of the type you see smeared on the front page of every newspaper in the country right now, but there were Hotshots and Smokejumpers who responded to both 9-11 and hurricane Katrina.
The difference between Hotshots and Smokejumpers really boils down to numbers and size. Smokejumpers work in small numbers on small fires during a fire’s initial attack. Hotshots, on the other hand, work as an integrated 20 person crew on what are often referred to as a “project fires,” e.g., everything you see in Colorado right now.
Last day on Derby Fire.
We lit the fire behind us. It got away.
We told them it wouldn’t work. We were right.
You can see, I’m a little dirty.
The life and work of a Hotshot is no laughing matter.
Essentially, the work season begins some time in the spring and typically ends with the first flakes of snow. So, a Hotshot works for roughly six to eight months out of the year during which s/he may travel to up to as many as 30 fires across the country, working 16 hour days for 14 to 21 days in row without a day off.
Living, eating, sleeping and working with your closest 20 friends the entire time under some pretty stressful and austere conditions. Needless to say, it is common practice to go two weeks without a shower and only changing your underwear once in the process.
If the conditions don’t get you, the work most likely will.
Hiking with up to 70 pounds of gear, working to dig fire line with picks, shovels and chainsaws in excessive heat, dodging fire and flames, sleeping in the dirt, eating standard army issue rations is a normal day.
And there ain’t no one around to take your glory shot either, no one to marvel at your accomplishment because everyone has their heads down and their butts in the air cussing, working and sweating. Hotshots are sent in to tackle the most difficult and dangerous assignments. They are tasked in many cases with attempting to pull off the impossible, and believe it or not, they have a remarkable success rate.
End of a hard day.
There are other types of crews besides Hotshots. These resources are designated Type 2 crews. They are composed of lesser trained and experienced firefighters. Sure, there may be some old salty dawgs in their ranks, but as a whole, they lack the leadership, experience and skill of the Hotshots.
Needless to say, in the adrenaline, testosterone, competition filled atmosphere of the fire world there is a well-established hierarchy and the Type 2 crews, somewhat derisively known as “baggers” (derived from the tendency of these crews to be sloppy in their appearance and conduct), are low down in the pecking order. As I mentioned, when you work on an hotshot crew it is easy to become impressed with yourself. I believe there is good reason for this, but the unfortunate thing is that it is often misguided.
Sure, Hotshots are the lean, mean firefighting machine, but they are not the be-all and end-all of what actually stops a fire.
The Aftermath.
In fact, the job of the Type 2 crews is just as crucial to the endeavor as anything pulled off by a Hotshot crew. Due to their lack of experience and what have you, Type 2 crews are often tasked with the dirty job of mop-up.
Mop-up is what happens after the main fire front has passed and you left with a smoldering landscape. This smoldering landscape has to be secured because if you work around fire long enough you will quickly realize that fire is alive and it will take full advantage of any opportunity you provide it to get up and run and play across the landscape some more.
So, all those smoldering spots and chunks of debris have to be extinguished. This is a thankless, monotonous, meticulous and filthy job, but it has to be done and Type 2 crews (at least the good ones) are great at it.
Different strokes for different folks, or should I say, different strokes for differently focused folks?
Enough about fire. What does any of this have to do with yoga, you ask?
The answer may surprise you.
There is little room to argue that since it arrived on the shores of America that yoga has undergone some serious transformation(s). Good, bad or indifferent, like it or not, it’s happened and it continues to happen.
I am of the opinion that in the end it all makes little difference. Yoga has been around for a really, really long time and I don’t necessarily think that a bunch of silly westerners, no matter how much money and influence they have, are going to come to appreciably bear on this ancient science of self-realization. In the end, yoga will be just fine.
And here’s why. Yoga will survive because in its universality it can handle anything you throw at it simply by giving you what you want. If you come to yoga looking for a great body and tight abs, it will give it to you. If you come to it looking to get flexible to impress your friends with stupid human tricks, no problem. If you want to be a superstar, that’s an option too. Yoga will give you what you want all the way up to and including union with the Divine. The issue comes down to where you set your sights.
Personally, I have my eyes set on the highest prize. I want the big one. I want Yoga, union with a capital “Y.”
Sure, I don’t know if I will get there. Hell, I don’t even know if I will like it once I do, but that’s where I’m headed. This requires a serious focus, a complete orientation of my life to the practice. Yoga is not something I do. It’s how I live. It’s how I make my choices. It’s my compass, my guide, my rock for the ages. This is not an easy thing.
It requires discipline.
In our day and age of fly by night, instant gratification, discipline gets a bad rap. We don’t like to be told what to do. And when we are, we often look for a way out, for a way to make the rule fit us so that in the end we don’t really need to change. We offer up our interpretation to bring the principle closer to where we are instead of striving to reach toward it. It’s a twisted approach and one which ensures our status as the lowest common denominator.
I want more and I don’t mind falling in line. Thankfully, my years fighting fires have shown me another, dare I say the real, side of discipline. Discipline isn’t about limitations.
Discipline offers you an avenue to freedom.
Following the rules, listening to the guidance of those who have achieved more than you, walking in line (literally and metaphorically) opens you up to a realm of possibilities and experiences you can barely imagine.
Through discipline you are free to go where it is too dangerous for others to follow. The real difference between the Hotshots and the “baggers” boils down to this. As a Hotshot, i.e., a highly trained, disciplined “soldier,” I was free to travel in and out of the most dangerous, precarious and deadly situations with little more than a blink of an eye. In return, I was awarded with opportunities, insights and spectacles that my fellow firefighters were left to merely dream about as they rummaged through the ashes.
In my humble opinion, yoga is the rabbit hole. How far you want to go down that hole is limited by only two things; how much you want it and how much you are willing to do to get it. My experience has shown me that the answer to both these lies in your relationship to discipline.
So, my suggestion, stop whining about what yoga says you should and shouldn’t do and either do it, or don’t. In the end, the choice is yours. I’ve made mine and my hope is that you’ll make it out onto the lines with me. Until then, you know where to find me.
Thousand yard stare looking inside.
Incorrect source, offensive, or found a typo? Or do you want to write for Elephant?
Great article. And how fascinating to hear about your experiences facing the flames. Wow. I agree with you completely that by embracing discipline we attain freedom, and have found this to be the case in both my ashtanga yoga practice and how it influences my teaching and marriage. The truth is that commitment frees up enormous amounts of psychic space.
I'll have to say that at the same time, the longer I've practiced the more flexible I've become about sometimes missing practice in light of the realization that in order for my life as a whole to go well (and to create harmony with people in my life) I sometimes need to prioritize other things, for example, when I go back to Ireland there are times when it's more important to spend time with my family and very old friends than to practice asana. But, my asana practice has given me the gift of equanimity so that I don't melt down when I can't do it…at least not as much as I used to!
Thanks Thaddeus!
Thanks Dearbhla.
I completely agree with you. And I think you are right, as one comes to truly understand the rules s/he knows when and how to bend them in the appropriate ways. In my experience though, the vast majority of people move on to the bending before they've really sunk their teeth into the following. Because as you correctly point out, within the discipline there really is so much more freedom than one might perceive from the outside looking in.
Hi Thad.
Another great piece to think on: freedom/restriction ; the point of yoga; fire (as theme we're both mulling, huh?).
The freedom/restriction dynamic is particularly apt, I guess, to Ashtanga. We've got our regimented practice that is supposed to get us to freedom (yoga, union, stilled mind, what have you). I'm also thinking (unhappily, I assure you) of Kierkegaard: Anxiety if the Dizziness of Freedom.
Freedom… thoughts right before the Fourth? How timely.
Thanks Steve.
Yes, a lot to think about concerning all those issues. I was pleasantly surprised to see us sharing a theme for the day. Funny how those things happen. And yes, while I didn't write this piece specifically from the perspective of an ashtangi, I can't really escape the implication since it forms a cornerstone of my practice. Oddly enough, it was ashtanga that actually led me back to my practice of bhakti as well.
Your last sentence has sadly planted the image of Mel Gibson's lament at the end of Braveheart. It's going to take me awhile to get that out of my head. I may have to hold a grudge for a wee-bit.
Really nice piece Thad. I could never imagine being a "Hotshot." Absolutely amazing the work that you did.
This has been a big meditation for me lately, vis a vis discipline. I feel a lot of people approach spirituality and yoga with an idea that they don't have to adhere to structures, rules, disciplines, etc, and I think people really sell themselves short when apply the "religion" of relativity/subjectivity too much to their spirituality.
To have structure/focus/tradition as a guiding framework does indeed lead to the greatest freedom. It comes full circle, at least in my tradition, where once one has been fine-tuned by a strong and steady practice, then the heart is so full of enlightenment and love that one goes beyond rules and regulations into the realm of spontaneous devotion to the Divine. But that is such an advanced stage and should never be imitated at the beginning.
Thanks for the reflections Chris.
I couldn't agree more with what your statements. In fact, your second paragraph essentially encapsulates the entire point. And as you point out, it's very dangerous for beginners, regardless of their practice or tradition, to imitate the more advanced realizations. Without the proper foundation, we are left in quite a bad way.
It's kind of like walking into a class and being instructed to "do what feels right." This is really such an advanced teaching and stage to reach. In the beginning it is crucial to have the guidance and instruction so that we can arrive at a place of real understanding within ourselves.
I learned something very important from that. Thank you so much.
Happy to be of service. Thank you for reading.
This is such a powerful (and timely!) piece, Thaddeus. Thank you for a beautiful contribution to EJ. You explain the life of a hotshot so well, illuminating a whole little segment of society that most people have never even heard of. This piece perfectly highlights how we can learn about yoga everywhere in our daily lives instead of limiting our yogic growth and explorations to the confine of the mat. From discipline comes freedom – that's really the heart and purpose of abhhasa. Well done my dear.
Thanks.
It's really funny to me how few people know about Hotshots. Even living out west, where they are much more common, very few people know about them and what they do. Which is kind of sad, given all the good work they do for people and the environment.
Oh well, I guess in this regards they are even more akin to yogis. It's the really good ones that you seldom hear from.
Shared this with a current FS fire fighter who does yoga. Loves all around!
He appreciated your voice!
Thanks Mizboognish for sharing it with the troops.
Tell him/her to be safe this summer.
If I ever get around to it, I will write the story of how I realized that I needed to get out of fire. Let's just say that I was in Happy Camp, CA sitting at the bottom of a ravine employing MIST tactics on 90+ degree slope on a fire that was burning into the wilderness and I looked around and it dawned on me that I was the only "value" at risk out there.
Hi… from an old HS – (TC SZ Region 5) and 9 years of yoga, its funny how dedication, committment and discipline have made my life post hotshots and yoga now so much better than it ever would have been without it. I am thankful that both came into my life at the perfect time for me to learn and to keep growing. Thanks for reminding everyone what we did and what HS's continue to do!
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Right on Michelle. Thanks for reading. There's no doubt about it, we're a special breed—not better, not worse, but special nonetheless.
[...] of firefighters have been sent in to fight these fires—in high heat and very dangerous [...]
On behalf of many — Thank You. On a related note, see: "Humble Warrior. Off the Mat." http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/07/humble-war…
Thanks for this Roger. I don't know how your post escaped my sights. I'm sorry that it did.
Yeah, I've been there and done that.
I actually have a great story that I might tell in full one day, but the essence of it goes something like this. We worked a 16 hour shift in NV and laid down about 10:00 pm. At 10:05 they woke us up and told us that we needed to drive three hours to the little town of Beaty, NV because it was about to burned over. We load up, consume massive doses of caffeine and hit the road. Three hours later, out of minds, we arrive and are told, "Never mind. We jumped the gun a little bit. We're going to bed you down and send you out in the morning." So we lay down at 2 am in a near-by field and at about 2:15 the automatic sprinklers come on. Have you ever tried to run in a mummy sleeping bag? It's hard.
We wake up at 6 and head out to the fire, which was caught by some jumpers. We spend the rest of the day in the blazing sun, racing passing cars on foot (I have video) and sleeping under our buggies to avoid the heat. Ahhh, those were the days.
Thanks again for your contribution.
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