Much was familiar: Lined up amid a column of 20 or so, wearing a pack, hat, watching my feet as we marched cross country. The distinctive graveyard feel of blackened trunks and leafless limbs, rows and rows to the ridgetop. The discussions about fire behavior, tactics, where the handcrews would go, the hoselays if low enough, the dozers, air attack. The threats to anticipate, always that, and plenty of them.

But on this day the ground was green, the hats soft, packs light. This was no hotshot crew pounding up a steep slope in the smoke, then yanking chainsaws into their distinctive whine and groan, pulaskis and McLeods and shovels beating dirt, chopping roots and scraping a line down to mineral soil, businesslike, maybe for hours, probably overnight, longer if the fire took off.

“If you want to know what a handcrew does, ask that guy; where is he?” our guide told the group at a stopping point after answering a question about what a fireline is, exactly.

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“Why I’m a journalist now,” I quipped, though that’s a lie. Fire was a perfect career for me but for knee injuries that culminated with a final blowout during smokejumper training.

At least metaphorically, I discovered similar leaps in journalism. The thing burning inside that carried me into wildland firefighting translated well to reporting and writing. No doubt you have that thing you can’t not do. Maybe it is skiing, coding, singing, teaching, saving animals, building birdhouses. We each have our thing or things.

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Fire suited me well with the athletic and decision-making challenges and lessons, and perhaps more so the sense of greater purpose, thinking back. I was in my 20s then. Such consideration took a back seat to proving myself (mainly to myself), thrill seeking, thinking about what I might want to be when/if I ever grew up.

Many of us went on to professional lives — lawyers, city planners, professors and the like. My best friend on the crew became a cardiologist after tearing up his knee for good.

A couple went on to prison, but that’s only to say we filled the full range. Most worked full careers in fire, whether Forest Service or municipal departments. Our crew produced more than its share of chiefs and incident commanders. The first female hotshot was on our crew before my time. I worked with the second. Today, about a quarter of wildland firefighters are women.

Though I couldn’t type when I began, I believe I had the better preparation for journalism as a career than college. Newsrooms in their way can be a lot like a fire crew answering the call. This part of the job always felt familiar.

But even the day to day matches up. My brand of firefighting mostly happened far from water. The challenge was less dealing with flame fronts and far more ultramarathon grinds beating dirt and/or lighting backfires while the sun set, rose and often enough set again. The longest shift for me was 60 hours punching up to timberline in Kings Canyon, Calif., and then firing out on our way back down when the leaders back in fire camp lost track of us. Our supe wasn’t one to stop, ever. So we pushed on and got the job done.

News is like that, not the place for people whose first thought is for their personal life. Those who excel tend to be at least somewhat crazy, alas. In wildland fire, at least there still is winter.

Both of these callings get into your blood, or they did mine. FOMO runs deep. I can’t drive by a fire scar to this day without imagining how it burned, how I’d fight it. Ask my poor wife or kids. Watch their eyes roll.

So no surprise I’d tag along on the hike last week into the Parleys Canyon Fire scar from 2021, already having driven by it enough to ponder. The treat for me was our guide, Brad Washa, had served as division boss on the critical side of the blaze aimed at the Summit Park neighborhood.

You know I geeked out at where he assigned the crews, the dozers, how he sweet talked air attack into making direct drops on the fire and spot fires against their better judgment. Took me right back to doing the same with a bulldozer operator fed up with the day shift crew before us as night fell and I was tasked with getting dozer line tied into our handline that began at an anchor point where the slope steepened, and then burning out the section with a small squad.

Hmm, not so different than dealing with reluctant story sources.

I joked that our guide might have saved Summit Park just because he knew someone in a plane. Human connections make more of a difference than you might think.

After the hike, I knew I was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t help but pull my old red card certification out of my wallet and show it to our guide in the parking lot. It got me through checkpoints for years after my fire career.

It’s dog-eared and faded to pink now. The things we carry.

Don Rogers is the editor of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.