The Real Pack Test

Believe it or not, I’m sitting in a bar right now. Every business in Nederland, it seems, has wifi. Even the bars. And then, when we were here for Frozen Dead Guy Festival, I heard that even the coffee shops serve beer. Heh.

Today was our official field day. I know that I said we had one last week, but today was the one that we were supposed to have back in March. We treated today like a real fire, it was essentially a drill. So we gathered up around 8:30 and got "briefed" on the fire situation we had facing us. We skipped PT and went right to the area where we were going to dig line. It was about a forty-five minute drive from the work center. We were actually digging line for a purpose, though – there’s a prescribed burn planned for that area on Sunday.

So anyway, we got out of the trucks, briefed again on our plan of attack and we started digging. We had been split up into three separate squads, but we all started out digging the line together. To dig a line means to dig up the ground until you reach mineral soil, something that won’t burn. We used a variety of tools, all of which you should google because I’m not going to explain them. I used a scraper and a Pulaski before lunch. After lunch I was on a combi for the rest of the line we dug. We started the line up hill and then went across the hill, moving the dirt up the hill. Then we went down on the other side. Going down was actually just as difficult as going up because you had to watch your footing even more. After that, the squads broke up and cleared the green from the area that is going to be burned (the "black"). This means that we took a lot of the still-green slash (branches, limbs, etc) out of the black and moved it to the "green" (the area that will remain unburned). At one point, Chad circled us up and reminded us that, should we run a fire-shelter deployment drill, don’t actually deploy your real fire shelter. I had a feeling he was telling us this for a reason, so I was just waiting for it to happen.

They kept calling out fake weather reports and fire behavior changes over the radio all day. Emily was about to have us "grid out" an area (sweep it in a line like a search party) to check for hot spots (spots where the ground is still smoldering) but we were called on the radio to meet up with another squad and pretend to dig a line around some spot fires that had cropped up. That brought us right up to lunch time. We broke for lunch where we were on the hill and it was nice to get the packs off. I found out a few days ago that my pack weighs about thirty-seven pounds. I have no idea how it could be so heavy. I think it’s the MREs and the batteries that add the extra weight. We have to have six quarts of water in the pack, which makes for a lot of the weight. But it didn’t feel this heavy before. Oh well. Once I got the pack off, my back stopped hurting. And it wasn’t so bad for most of the day. My shoulders seemed to take the brunt of it, which I prefer to having my lower back carry it all. So it’s fine (for now, heh … today was just Day 1).

Anyway, after lunch Chad (our main supervisor) circled us up and told us that the groups who are doing the burn on Sunday were hesitant about the lines we had dug. They were good, but he said that they wanted a line down the middle, just in case they didn’t want to burn it all right away. So we dug another line uphill. I was toward the end of the line and, by the time I got up the hill, I was the last person because the people behind me had stayed down at the bottom for some reason. Once I made it to the top, the decision was made to head back down and improve the line, to get all of the "duff" out of it (the small burnable material like pine needles and dead grass).

So we were about halfway back down the hill when they called for us to just stop what we were doing and get down the hill. The fire behavior was apparently beyond our control so we had to head to our escape route. We had only gone a few yards when they called for RTO, Reverse Tool Order – aka, turn around. Our escape route had been "cut off" and we had to run to our deployment site. So the order was called to drop packs, meaning take our line gear off. When you have to do a fire shelter deployment, you take your fire shelter out of your pack, a bottle of water and your tool and you just go, you leave everything else. So everyone was scrambling to grab everything we needed. Running with all of that is pretty awkward, I dropped my shelter once and my water bottle twice. We ran about a quarter of a mile and then Chad pointed to where our deployment site was. People were already lying down in the grass, so I joined them. It was pretty exhilarating. We treated it like a real deployment, talking to each other to make sure everyone was accounted for. We had lost two people – they had been held back as a test to make sure we were all paying attention to our numbers. Everyone also had to hold up their shelter, water and tool to prove they had it.

After that was all over, we walked back to where we dropped our packs and repacked our things. Then we loaded up and headed back to the trucks where we sharpened tools for a while. We did an AAR (After Action Report … the government sure loves their acronyms), where we circled up and discussed what happened that day, and then headed back to the work center.

It was a great day. I’m not gonna lie, it was rough. Digging line tires you out real quick and there isn’t much chance for recovery, you just have to keep going. Everyone was huffing and puffing, which made me feel a bit better about my own shortness of breath. And the fact that I'm a klutz really seems to come through in this line of work. The packs don’t help, but I know I’ll get used to it. My feet feel decent, surprisingly. Everyone was warning us about how today was going to prove that our boots weren’t broken in but I think I’ll be okay. I don’t have any blisters and I didn’t really feel any sustained hot spots. The ankle bracelet that I made will have to come off, though. It’s sad, but I can’t wear it with a boot that laces halfway up my calf. What I noticed more was that my sports bra straps had started to irritate me after a while because of all the pressure from the pack. I think I may have to find sports bras with wider straps or something. We’ll see how it goes the next time.

Today was definitely challenging, but I don’t think I questioned it. I just tried to keep going. My ability to stay positive has actually surprised me in the past few months. Even when things get crappy, I’m still not reconsidering my commitment to NCCC, which is good. I think Surf taught me that; after three seasons, I came to realize that even on my worst days, there’s no where else I’d rather be than on a field in the middle of who-knows-where, getting yelled at by Matt Hurley. I think the same goes for wildfire. At the end of all of this, I’ll look back and see how far I’ve come and how glad I am that I stuck it out.