Young Men and Fire (33 page)

This is as far as we are able to accompany them. When the fire struck their bodies, it blew their watches away. The two hands of a recovered watch had melted together at about four minutes to six. For them, that may be taken as the end of time.

It was 6:10 by Dodge’s watch when he rose from the ashes of his own fire. From then on, Dodge had his own brief tragedy to lead, which in some ways also must be considered a part of this tragedy.

We leave the dead on the hillside with a promise made to me at the Office of Air Operations and Fire Management of Region One of the United States Forest Service that their crosses will always be renewed.

I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the
end of this tragedy where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death.