Fires in the summer are a common occurrence in the dense forests of Washington. This summer is no exception. There was a really big one, raging just outside Yakima and started by lightening.
I got up early this morning to get a cup of coffee in the hotel breakfast area. As I usually do on these trips I will start up conversations with strangers at a drop of a hat. No exception today. Started talking to a tattooed man in his early 30s . Turns out he fixes the helicopters that are used by "smoke jumpers", the men and women who make a career of fighting forest fires. Not exactly the safest and best paying job in the world but one that can be exciting and rewarding, that is if you like working in 150 degree heat with your life in constant danger.
I read a book a few years ago "Young Men and Fire" by Norman Mclean which chronicled the events surrounding a forest fire in Montana that took the life of 15 volunteer smoke jumpers in 1949. It was an amazing story, reading like fiction, (he also wrote "A River Runs Through It). Back then" smoke jumpers" were largely untrained college students trying to make a buck in the summer.
Today, fortunately, the smoke jumpers are mostly professionals. But the risks are still there.
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