Young Men and Fire

I have heard many times the story of men and women who died or were lucky to escape death when the fire they were sent to extinguish overran them.  Part of our wildland firefighter training each year includes the lessons learned from recent or old fatalities or near misses to fire.

I had never read anything from Maclean until this documentary of the Mann Gulch fire.  I enjoy his writing style, and I especially enjoyed the way he told this story – as one who had fought fire.  He was employed by the forest service in Montana in his youth and experienced battles with fire there.

The tragedy of the fire in Mann Gulch is dissected and examined from several angles in order to learn all that is possible as to how it happened - the painstaking study of documents related to the investigation, of the science related to fire and how it played a part that day, the two survivors who returned to the gulch to relive a terrible event in their lives.

The emotions I felt when the events were retold were powerful. I can only imagine what it must have been like. Near the end of the book we can catch a small glimpse: “When a firefighter is told to drop his firefighting tools he is told to forget he is a firefighter and run for his life.”

Family Night Farming

My daughter loves to play games.  We all do, but not as much as her.  Saturday and Sunday and again tonight she has wanted to play The Farming Game.  We used that as a family home evening activity.  It was a lot of fun.

Except for the frustration …  I think this is a pretty good example of the struggle it can be to move through life, two steps forward and one step back.  Or in some cases in tonight’s game, 1 forward and two back.  Real life is very similar to this game, or Monopoly or the game called Life.  A good month is tempered by an unexpected car repair, etc.

Tonight we had many of those trials. When I had borrowed from the bank to lease rangeland and buy some cows, I was able to take the calves to sale only 1 time because I missed the auction spaces on every other trip around the board.  On another trip around the board I won double $$ on hay harvest, but my operating expense wiped out my entire check at the doubled amount, and then I had to dig into my savings to pay off the rest of the operating expense.  The next time it was a weather related loss at harvest time.

Yes there were trips around the board that earned me money, and each of us experienced the same thing, losses and gains.  We were able to take a moment and talk about how this game can relate to our jobs, our unexpected costs, and our increases. It was a good experience, and I think our kids understand a bit better about what to expect, and why it is a good idea to prepare for difficult times.

But it was a game so let’s focus on the fun:

Justin prepares to roll for a harvest.

The 2nd and 3rd place finishers with their profits.