Editor’s note: The names in this piece have been changed to protect people’s privacy.
I was 19 when I first started fighting fires, in the spring of 2000. By then, I had been a tween and teenage runaway, a sex worker, and a survivor of violence inflicted by both strangers and people I knew. Anyone eyeing my life trajectory would’ve guessed that I’d end up permanently homeless and possibly addicted to several substances. That did happen. That’s the life wildland firefighting saved me from.
After two years working for private contractor crews, 2002 was my first year on a Forest Service hotshot crew, called the Solar Hotshots. I was the only woman on the crew and one of the only crew members from outside of California. We’d started in May, first traveling to Southern California, then the Eastern Sierras. A hotshot crew is composed of 18-22 people, mostly or exclusively men, who spend their summers on the front lines of wildfires. Trained for complex initial attack, these elite crews are self-sustaining, capable of working as a single unit or multiple smaller ones. The term “hotshot” is a good indicator of the profession’s machismo ethos. I was 22, mature for my age but also untethered, unprepared for the rigid and conformist culture of my chosen crew, which was much different from the diverse, often multilingual men (and few women) I had worked with as a contractor.
The hotshot superintendent, Phillip, warned me: Most of the guys had never worked with women before. I took that as a challenge. There was so much I didn’t know back then, both about myself and the world. Experiences for which, in my language, there existed no lexicon or vocabulary, like “misogyny” and “nonbinary.” I was uncomfortable with both my gender and women in general, but wouldn’t begin unpacking this until years later. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Solar Hotshots was my first hotshot crew (there would be two more), and I was constantly singled out, particularly by my superintendent, whose style was classified back then as “old-school.” There are still many crews who operate in this way, rarely hiring women at all or, if they do, only hiring one or two and never putting them on the same squad or team. The belief back then was that women caused trouble. This belief persists among many firefighters, whether spoken out loud or not. I was forced off that crew after less than two years, giving up a hard-earned permanent position because of unchecked harassment. I can count myself among hundreds of women and other minorities who have left wildland fire because of a hostile or dangerous work environment.
This hostility is echoed in our federal approach to fighting wildfires. Despite living in a country whose landscapes evolved with and are adapted to the presence of fire — much of it human-caused — wildfires are, for the most part, approached solely with suppression in mind rather than prevention and adaptation. Federal agencies and laws dictate local responses, often hindering efforts of nonprofits and state agencies. Clear scientific evidence has proven the effectiveness of wildfire mitigation strategies like prescribed burning, thinning, cultural burning and year-round land stewardship, but the majority of federal funding goes towards suppression.
Yearly wildfire suppression averages around $3 billion in federal spending, but fire suppression tactics can make future fires worse. This is known as the “fire suppression paradox.” As a wildland firefighter, I often found myself engaging in suppression tactics that were downright destructive to ecosystems. Prevention and mitigation have been proven more effective, and could also reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses. By working with nonprofits and Indigenous groups to expand stewardship responsibilities and cultural access, we could halt what has become a fire feedback loop and protect ecosystems from the dangers of climate change.
BY MID-JULY 2002, the country was at a Preparedness Level 5, meaning that over 80% of the nation’s fire-fighting resources were committed. This was an extreme year for fires, with Oregon, Colorado and Arizona setting new records for acreage burned.
We worked two or three weeks at a time, followed by two or three days off, traveling in two small buses equipped with seating and storage compartments, called buggies, and the superintendent’s truck, which we called the “Supt.” (pronounced like “soop”) truck. I could count my days off on my hands by the time we were called to the Monument Fire. This was in eastern Oregon, adjacent to John Day, a small town where I was stationed for one month the previous summer when I was working on the contract crew.
As we drove through John Day, I remembered the demolition derby and the local John Day crew — I had helped one of the guys prepare his car for the derby, and we all attended the county fair, screaming at him from the sidelines as he demolished his car. Those had been country boys like some of the guys I worked with now, but so much more laid-back. So much more fun. Not hostile, like some of my co-workers.
Often, I had to remind myself that I got along with men. There was something about the hotshot crew itself, the performance of it, similar to the military in its rigid conformity. This was very different from the contract crews, which had been a more diverse mix of ages and backgrounds, and whose members changed with each fire call. These guys loved watching war films, like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan. Most of us were under 25 years old except for the squad bosses, captains and superintendent. This, among other things, made it like a platoon. Phillip was equivalent to a platoon leader, handing down orders to the captains, who gave them to the squad bosses, or squaddies.
In the Army, platoons are split into squads, and squads are split into teams, equivalent to our mods and squads. We used “strategy” and “tactics” to fight fires, like soldiers did in war. Each crew member was expected to conform to the crew’s culture, just as soldiers must conform to their platoon’s culture. The grunts — the ones without a title like lead firefighter, squad boss or captain, like me — remained mute when it came to thoughts or opinions. We weren’t supposed to initiate communication with the captains or Phillip, who had ultimate authority over our lives and behavior.
By working with nonprofits and Indigenous groups to expand stewardship responsibilities and cultural access, we could halt what has become a fire feedback loop and protect ecosystems from the dangers of climate change.
This is no accident. The first national parks were governed by the U.S. Cavalry. Military training occurred in national parks during World War II. The military was also deployed in Oregon and California when Indigenous people resisted displacement from lands that are now governed by the Park Service, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
The Spanish came by ship to Oregon in the 1500s — they were the first Europeans to arrive there, where more than 60 tribes and bands had lived for thousands of years, speaking at least 18 languages (probably more; written accounts were mostly left by settlers and explorers). Oregon and California hadn’t yet been separated into two states. There was no border, and many Northern California tribes were also southern Oregon tribes. Tribes and bands were intimately connected to their land, its microclimates and flora and fauna, in a way most white settlers never would be. Food and game were abundant. Salmon ran all the way from the ocean to the Malheur River in eastern Oregon, something that is now almost inconceivable.
Before the arrival of Europeans and American settlers, meadows and grasslands populated much of Oregon. Tribes, such as the Klamath, Sahaptin Umatilla and Coos-Kalawatset, maintained lush green grass by fire in order to lure elk and other herd animals from forested areas; the absence of trees improved sightlines for hunters. After each year’s elk hunt tribes throughout Oregon, like the Tolowa, burned the meadows, keeping trees at bay. The use of fire was multifunctional, encouraging new grass while also producing pliable shoots for basketry and building materials.
Berries, particularly huckleberries, were also burned on timelines tailored to each berry’s growth cycle, usually occurring in late summer after harvests. Although settlers also burned in Oregon well into the mid-1900s, these burns were in service of livestock grazing, not land tending. With the disappearance of Indigenous fire, open prairies transformed into dense, flammable forests overgrown with brush. This was an ecological occurrence across the U.S. as it was settled — townships and villages sprouted on sparsely forested land formerly maintained by the frequent burning of prairies and grasslands. Grasslands converted to forests, and forests, which had become so scarce in Europe, became a symbol of the land’s health rather than a sign of deterioration. Increased tree cover transformed the landscape.
Some of Oregon’s largest fires occurred in the 20th century with the advent of clear-cutting. The Tillamook Burn, which started in 1933, burned over 350,000 acres. Historian Stephen Pyne argues that the fire burned for 18 years, with new fires igniting each year in its footprint and each successive fire further degrading the land. In 1949 reseeding began. It continued for two decades. In 1979, the Tillamook burn area became the Tillamook State Forest.
When we were called to Oregon in 2002, the Biscuit Fire, Oregon’s largest post-1900 fire since the Tillamook, had ignited four days before we arrived. It was expanded by thousands of acres (almost doubling its natural size) through firefighters’ burning operations, although no structures were threatened by the fire, and the region included many fire-adapted native species. The area, which is considered “mixed-conifer,” supports a fire return interval of 45-80 years. This doesn’t mean that one fire burns every 45-80 years but rather that many small fires regularly burn in mosaic patterns, leaving some patches unburned and others burned, whereas some other ecosystems, like lodgepole pine, have a longer fire return interval (up to hundreds of years) and thrive with high severity fires that kill nearly all the trees. Mixed-conifer landscapes thrive with frequent low or medium severity fires. When the Forest Service decided to burn extra land to allow the fire to meet various barriers, like hand-dug firelines, roads, and dozer lines, they interrupted the natural mosaic pattern the fires would have assumed, increasing the severity of the fire as well as its size. They spent over $150 million on suppression, but the fire wasn’t declared contained until December, by which time it had made its way across the California border. Many large fires, especially those in forest ecosystems, burn until the snow falls, despite aggressive suppression efforts.
The Monument Fire, where we were being sent to work, was east of the Biscuit Fire, near Unity, in a more arid ecosystem. Ponderosa fuel type up high, piñon/juniper at mid-elevation, and sage in the high desert, which is the lowest elevation. The Burnt River Valley, where the town of Unity is situated, is over 4,000 feet in elevation despite being the flattest and lowest landscape around. Much of eastern Oregon and Washington is high desert. Unity is on the east side of Malheur National Forest, less than two hours west of the Snake River, which traces Idaho’s western border. This is where the Northern Paiute, including the Burns Paiute, Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes once tended the land with fire, and many, including the Umatilla, are now engaged in bringing cultural fire back to the land.
Our vehicles angled up from the valley, along switchback dirt roads and into the shelter of the mountains, armed with extra fuel, water and rectangular cases of military rations, otherwise known as Meal, Ready to Eat (MREs). Although there was an established fire camp, the drive to the fire was so long and the camp was already so crowded that we decided it was better for us to spike out — make our own camp — and retain our independence as a crew.
Everyone helped to construct our camp, surrounded by a haze of gauzy gray smoke that obscured the waning daylight. David, a squad boss, built a warming fire as the sawyers bucked a tree for sitting logs. Once they settled, standing and sitting around the warm orange glow, I found a place to sit and write in my journal. Some of the guys teasingly called it my diary. Are you writing about me in your diary? I did write about them, all of them, but not in the way they imagined. I tried to parse each day, to understand my place on the crew and in the world.
Cold, high-elevation nights called for the tangible shelter of our tents. Each morning our captains, Owen and Nickolas, rustled our tents and told us to get up. More and more, I was startled from a deep sleep, groggier than earlier in the season. Some of the guys needed to be yelled at or shaken awake. My body carried the past two months of 16-hour days like dead weight. I craved sleep more than anything else and hated waking up to frigid mornings. My sleeping bag was filthy but so cozy, unlike my stiff, cold fire-resistant pants. We hadn’t showered for seven days and wouldn’t shower for seven more. My entire body prickled with grime, legs layered with ash and dirt, hair an unbrushable tangled mess. Every morning, I switched out my sleeping shirt for a dirty crew shirt bleached with whitish sweat lines matching the straps of my pack. I first donned clean cotton socks, then a pair of wool socks stiff with old sweat and dirt or, on alternating days, luxuriously clean ones. My leather boots had pinched hard red calluses into the fronts and backs of my ankles. Calluses and blisters marred my heels, toes and the balls of my feet. My big toes were numb and would never regain full sensation.
Are you writing about me in your diary? I did write about them, all of them, but not in the way they imagined.
We milled around like zombies, all of us looking haggard beyond our years, until Owen poured us strong hot coffee from Phillip’s percolator. For breakfast we had MREs. (We also had them for lunch and dinner.) After that, we brushed our teeth and got to work.
Every day we poured streams of burning fuel mix into thick unburned undergrowth composed of half-fallen dead trees, brush, and plant litter. There’s a picture of me holding a drip torch while the dry, spindly trees behind me crown. Crowning is what happens when fire fully consumes a tree, including its crown, and these trees crowned quickly and easily because of their poor health. Trees that crown are more likely to die in fires. This is why trees like redwoods are so fire-resistant. Their lack of lower branches prevents fire from climbing into their vulnerable crowns.
Two and a half months in, burning, once exciting, was now mundane. I no longer needed a funnel to pour fuel mix into the canisters, and I wasn’t scared of laying a line of fire down right next to me. I high-stepped over the forest floor, almost running to keep pace with the fire. It felt like an obstacle course, choked with brush and small trees, ladder fuels that carried flames upwards, causing crown fires and incinerating the canopy. The ground, a crunchy layer of parched needles, scraggly brush, and fallen branches, dried by months without rain, crunched beneath my feet. This accumulated matter increased the intensity of the fires we set, so even the most resistant trees would likely die. All of it lit up magnificently, its heat parching my skin. My face was blackened by soot and dirt, but my upper lip was clean; I obsessively wiped it, because the guys had made fun of me for my trademark black soot mustache.
Phillip encouraged us to torch the landscape, because without any remaining plant matter to burn, the main fire would stop when or if it met these. Back then I didn’t question the strategy. I was happy to be in the woods and grateful for a paycheck. Privileged to be traipsing through nature, even when it was burning. But I cringed sometimes, setting little trees on fire, knowing I was leaving a moonscape of torched land in my wake. I thought we were doing something useful because the land clearly needed to burn, but creating a moonscape in these forests is the opposite of a fire mosaic. It increases invasive plant populations and takes longer to regenerate. So much land burned so completely only leads to more land primed for burning with more volatility in the future. We never considered regional fire regimes, or what would foster long-term forest health. This is the traditional mode of wildland firefighting: a self-perpetuating feedback loop that encourages larger fires and ultimately weakens the ecosystem. The end point is desertification.
MY ADRENALINE CRESTED AND FELL LIKE WAVES THROUGHOUT THE DAY. I got fourth, fifth and sixth winds. Phillip took advantage of the lengthier Oregon daylight, making sure we got lots of overtime. Near the end of our time on the fire, we were snapping at each other constantly, all of us exhausted from days made longer since we spent what would usually be our driving time working instead. Since early in the season, Phillip had been pulling me off the line during the workday so I could write out the timesheets. I dreaded spending time with him. “Girl,” he once said, “you look like you’re getting skinny.” He spoke to me intimately, as if we were close friends. Each time he said “girl,” I cringed. The word sounded like an insult. His nickname for me was “Fake Red,” because of my dyed hair.
After burning for many days, we worked with military personnel, clearing more fuel breaks, sawing trees and brush and chaining the stumps, branches and clumps of brush from hand to hand onto the other side of the fuel break, where we hoped the fire would not burn. Fire dozers were everywhere: small ones cutting fireline and large ones heaping the flammable materials we’d thrown across the break into piles reaching 6 feet tall. These piles were commonly slotted for off-season burning, but most of them would be neglected along with the fuel we had thrown across the fuel break, only to increase the power of successive wildfires.
The way we torched the trees and immolated the landscape, which may not have burned at all without us — it almost felt like a show of force. The government spent millions of dollars for an increased burn area with a reduced fire mosaic, but there weren’t enough funds to properly manage the land after the fire. The money, which could have gone towards prescribed burns and other land management, was now spent, released from the government coffers for the “emergency.” Of course, wildfires can be emergencies, but stewarding the land in which they burn could lessen the severity. That simply can’t happen without adequate federal funding.
The government spent millions of dollars for an increased burn area with a reduced fire mosaic, but there weren’t enough funds to properly manage the land after the fire.
ON OUR LAST NIGHT, DAY 21, we drove into camp for demobilization. We raided the government-funded supply caches, grabbing cases of water bottles and Gatorade that we carried on our shoulders back to the buggies. Phillip and Owen always reminded us to take as many as would fit into the buggies and Supt. Truck.
Everyone exchanged their dirty Nomex for clean, showering for the first time in three weeks. The shared women’s shower stall was all mine, one of the few benefits of being a minority at fire camp. Gingerly I removed my stiff dirty Nomex. I had long ago run out of clean socks and underwear. My wool socks retained the shape of my foot, reinforced by residual salt. Grime lined my hairline. My hair was matted with salt, dirt and ash.
I stared at my body in the mirror. I saw it as an object — an unruly body, different from the women I saw in magazines, film and television. I hated the characteristics that marked it as a woman’s body. Turning sideways, I pressed the flats of my hands hard against my breasts, imagining myself without them. Free of them. My hands were dark against my pale skin, knuckles creased with black soot. I had no understanding then of how to shift the way I saw and categorized myself.
In the woods, away from everything, there were moments of freedom from my social obligations as woman. As girl. The men I worked with carved me out, separating me into a divergent category. But I wanted to be of them. Not one of them, but among them and unobserved the way I assumed they were. I thought they were free from scrutiny, but some of the men must have felt like outsiders, too, especially Hank, who was teased for being scrawny, or Juan, whose beer belly was constantly pointed out. Not even Phillip was free. I didn’t ridicule his size, but most of the guys called him fat and conflated his size with laziness, not taking into account how decades of hotshotting had destroyed his body, just as it would destroy our own bodies, if we stayed long enough.
These nuances escaped me back then. I only looked in the mirror and hated myself for being too big. My belly, one of the only parts of my body mostly free from grime, was soft, pale, lined with stretch marks. Even as a child I had imagined this part of me different than it was. I stared at my blackened legs, their skin fully obscured by layers of sweat-salt, ash, soot, and dirt. Most of the hair on my legs had been rubbed off by my pants. Some would never grow back.
In the shower I let the hot water pummel my face before soaping my body and washing my hair. I was alone for the first time in three weeks, rediscovering my unobserved body. I’d forgotten that I had a body at all, or a self that was independent from the crew’s perceptions of me. With them I was so focused on how I was supposed to be, supposed to act, that it felt like I was losing any real sense of who I was, or who I wanted to be.
We bedded down in a field at fire camp. An Oregon hotshot crew nearby popped their tents as we laid out our space blankets. I watched them, counting out four women. Maybe five. I had never seen that many women on a hotshot crew, and imagined how my life would be different if I were on that crew. Would I be freer? Surely not, I thought. I had been taught that the presence of women led only to complications, and it would have been too painful to imagine otherwise. Despite my overwhelming loneliness, I didn’t try to talk to them.
In the end, I never worked on a hotshot crew that embodied a true team ethos, but, in my last year as a hotshot, I formed an enduring friendship with the other woman on my crew, one that I still deeply value. I’ve come to understand the importance of diversity in wildland fire — the people doing the firefighting just as much as the tools used to mitigate catastrophic fire. Any minority is inevitably singled out and scrutinized. If there’s two women on a 20-person crew that’s otherwise all men, they’re compared and contrasted in ways that foster competition or resentment. But four or five women? They’re just part of the crew.
I’ve come to understand the importance of diversity in wildland fire — the people doing the firefighting just as much as the tools used to mitigate catastrophic fire.
Similarly, diverse and varied approaches are essential when approaching fire policy. Some have proposed a singular federal fire agency, but a new federal agency won’t solve our problems. Approaching wildfires from a solely federal standpoint is what got us here. Instead, we need increased support and funding for local land stewardship, including prescribed and cultural burning. The U.S. is composed of incredibly varied ecosystems, nearly all of which evolved with the presence of fire. Federal laws and regulations (like the Clean Air Act and national burn bans) have historically inhibited local groups, including Indigenous groups, from reintroducing fire as a natural part of local ecosystems. Federal regulation is important for personnel qualifications and training, but once someone has met their qualifications, say, as a burn boss, they should be trusted to act according to their training. This involves trust and a willingness to prioritize ecological (and cultural) health, rather than profit. The payoff is a closer relationship with fire, but a healthier one, for humans and all creatures.
This essay is excerpted from Hotshot: A Life on Fire by River Selby, which will be published this August from Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Photos courtesy of River Selby.
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This article appeared in the August 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Burned.”
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