Federal employees who fight fires for a living are grossly underpaid. That fact may have led to the old saying that they are “paid in sunsets.” Wildland firefighters usually battle fires in very remote areas and have opportunities to see sunsets from a wide variety of vantage points that are rarely visited by humans. When they see the sunset, they may have dragged themselves out of a sleeping bag on the ground 14 hours earlier and are dog-tired, dirty, sweaty, thirsty, and *hangry. But if the clouds, smoke, landscape, and sun all cooperate at the right time, they may take a minute to drink some of the last (warm) water they still have while enjoying and saving a mental snapshot of a red sunset enhanced by smoke. And then someone yells “Bump Up,” and they grab their tool again — with that image lingering in their mind. Tomorrow’s shift will be better.
Snow this time of the year can create excellent opportunities for land managers to burn debris piles left over from fuel reduction, thinning, or timber harvesting operations. The snow reduces the chances of the fire creeping out into dry vegetation, and when backs are turned igniting a wildfire.
Like many other parks and forests, the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota and Wyoming has been burning piles in recent days. In their case, near Sheridan Lake, Deadwood South Dakota, and 10 miles south-southeast of Sundance, Wyoming.
Let’s be careful out there.
*Hangry: bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.
