--7/4/08
Nooo! I woke up this morning and my right arm itched a little – I have poison oak. It’s official. Damn. I think my immune system just gave up. We’ve been in so much of it for the past several days that I think maybe my resistance wore down … if I’m even resistant anymore. I was as a kid, but that could have changed by now.
We sawed for the first half of the day. I got saw time but ended up cutting my chaps. Reflecting on it, there were a lot of things that led up to it happening. Our assignment for the day was to cut along a dirt road to widen the line. We were above the marine layer, so it was pretty hot and a little unforgiving. I had just started my third tank, though I was slow-moving as it was my first time cutting something other than a ponderosa. Cutting brush is quite different. It looks easy, but it really isn’t, particularly when everything is overgrown and tangled up together.
Anyway, I was cutting on a slope at one point and I went to pop the chain break on by pushing on it with the back of my left hand. As I did, I think my right hand pulled back on the saw simultaneously. As a result, I pulled the saw back over my right knee, which was up higher than normal because of how I was standing on the slope. I felt something on my knee and when I saw that the chain had stopped, I knew what had happened. I immediately turned the saw off and told Patrick I was done. He asked if I was tired; I responded that I wasn’t, that I had cut my chaps so I was off the saw (a rule that Paul, our saw boss, had put down from Day One as a safety precaution). We got back to the top of the slope where the road was and inspected the damage. I had cut about a three inch slice through my chaps. Later on, Patrick said that I had managed to cut through all the layers of Kevlar. The chaps definitely did what they were supposed to do – as soon as the saw cut into it, the Kevlar tangled the chain and instantly stopped it.
Still, I was pissed. Paul sat me down at lunch to debrief about what had happened and I told him. He asked if I was okay to keep swamping or if I had been shaken up by the whole thing. I told him that I was just pissed because cutting my chaps meant that I had done something unsafe and I just thought that I was better than to let something like that happen. Paul made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. So I was off the saw for the rest of the day and I was back to swamping.
At the end of the day, we yellowed down (took our yellow Nomex shirts off), and we were heading back to camp when we drove by a backfire operation that was going on and we pulled over. We got the word to yellow and gear back up. They had us line out and watch the green for a while, which means to watch across the line from the fire in order to make sure no spot fires start from drifting embers. Some of us were actually watching the “blue” – the ocean – because we were standing along Highway 1, which runs right along the coast. Steakly had me and one of the sawyers, Tai, bump out of the line and mop up part of the area along the road that was already burned out. He relieved me of that duty, though, after he noticed I was playing dodge ball with some of the larger rocks that would come lose and tumble down the hillside. He missed the one that fell on my foot, though. That was a bit embarrassing and I hope no one saw it. I heard it falling and looked up to see where it was coming from so I could move, but by then it was already on my foot. It hurt more than I expected.
After Steakly sent me back into the line, I was standing around watching the green again. As brush was being burned up, it would scare the animals living on the hillside out of their burrows. Rats, mice, and the occasional rabbit would then scramble down the hillside and scurry across the road. At one point, I was watching one rat scamper across the road. He’d go a little ways, pause, and then move again. As he went, he moved more in my direction until he was two feet from me. I stared at him, expecting him to be frightened by my presence but then he moved again and paused right between my boots. He sat there for a few seconds and then moved on. I was astonished! He was a bold rat. Tai was next to me in the line and he couldn’t believe it either.
Meanwhile, I still got to celebrate the Fourth of July with the coolest fireworks ever – a backfire complete fire grenades and flares to keep things burning. It was quite impressive and it was the closest to fire we’ve been so far.
By the end of the day, my oak had firmly established itself on the inside of my right arm. I’m doing my best to not scratch it.
--7/5/08
I went with Jo this morning to the medical tent to get a steroid shot for my poison oak. Let’s hope it helps.
Today sucked. Royally. And it was mostly my attitude that made it suck. We had a hike up a hill today that was really difficult for me. It took me forever to get to where we were supposed to be. We dug a line around a rock outcropping. The hike back down was almost as bad.
I’m so slow. I hate having a big gap between me and the person in front of me all the time. I hate being such a weak hiker and holding people back. So many times today I was ready to lose it and cry and give up. So many times, I felt like my legs and back would give out. The poison oak hit me harder than I thought. It’s not painful, but it’s incredibly distracting and uncomfortable. My right arm is swollen and prickly from the elbow down. Any time I would pull on a root or something, my muscles and skin would tense and not want to work anymore.
I don’t know where my physical limits are, I’ve never been particularly good at judging them. So I just keep going. I’ll never get stronger if I quit. It’s a big deal to be on the saw squad. I don’t want to disappoint anyone by not hacking it. And I don’t want anyone to think I don’t respect the position. Like, I feel like I pissed Paul off today because I dropped the ball.
I just don’t know. Today was so rough, but what can I say or do? This is normal for dispatch, it’s what I can expect. Besides, everyone else is also going through it. And it could always be worse.
7/6/08 – 7/8/08
We swamped for the first half of the day. We also cleared out some lumber and other building materials that was stacked too close to a house. We did some other structure prep stuff as well. I was pretty miserable and bitchy for most of the day because of my arms. They are so swollen that my crew is teasing me about how jacked up I look. One of the guys told me that I looked like I had Popeye arms.
After lunch, we waited around to hear about our next assignment. We got the go ahead to do a burnout. We were originally going to only do about a mile-long stretch along Highway 1 between certain bridges.
Jo and Harrison got to use drip torches while the rest of the crew held the line and watched the green.
I also got to use a drip torch. I burned out a little around a house and along the road. Then I hopped in a rig with JT, Andrew and Sam and we parked up at a house and hiked a really loooong hike (of course) to get to another house at the very top of the mountain. JT, Andrew and Sam had to wait for me a few times. That was slightly embarrassing. I also discovered that my headlamp didn’t work (of course). So we got to the top and I got to burn out around the entire house. It was pretty sweet. From below, everyone said they were concerned at first because it looked like I set the top of the mountain on fire. We walked back down to the rig as Andrew and Sam burned out along the road as we went. I tried to stay away from the flames and the heat because it was irritating my oak-y arms, so I walked ahead of the lighting. JT had me drive the rig down to Highway 1 and park it and then meet back up with my squad.
Apparently they had been waiting for three hours. I had no idea our part of the burn out had taken that long. After waiting a little while, my squad lined out along a line we had cut, swamped and scraped earlier that day. They lit it off and we held there for a while.
Eventually we got word that we were in for the long haul – it had been decided that our crew would do the full 2.8 miles that was originally planned instead of just the one mile on our shift. So after the flames along our line died down, a section of my line gathered up around a warming fire and we ate dinner. As the night wore on, people would drift off for an hour or two. At one point, a tree near us torched and burned like a pyre for a little bit. Tai brought it to Paul’s attention just as Paul was drifting off to sleep. We all watched it intently for a bit. I definitely am learning a lot on this dispatch, especially regarding the attitude toward fire and fire behavior. The entire time the tree was torching, I sat there thinking “Do we do something about it?” But everyone else just watched and let it take its course.
I slept one or two hours on the line on the ground. I woke up around 4:00 am or whenever sunrise was and tried to keep the fire going. We waited around until about 7 or 8:00ish. After being still for so long, my arms were in so much pain. They were incredibly swollen. We finally went back to camp around 9:00ish. Along the way, we heard rumors and were asked about the possibility of working four more hours. The squads all said they could, but in my mind I knew I couldn’t. My arms were a mess. When we got back to camp, almost the whole crew went to the medical tent. I got another shot, some steroids in pill form and some topical steroid cream to put on my arms. JT and Steakly let us shower, get breakfast and then we broke down camp. Apparently because we worked such a long shift (almost 30 hours), we think that maybe they couldn’t get us on another full 16 hour shift before we demobilized the next day.
So after camp was broken down, we loaded up and JT and Steakly led us to Pfiffer State Beach, which was awful nice of them. They then got us out of camp and put us up in a pretty swank hotel in Carmel for the night so we could actually get some decent sleep. Everyone went out for dinner except me. I took a nap, my arms felt awful, it made me cry at one point. I took a shower, which helped a little. Jo brought me back some pizza. I felt slightly better as I went to sleep. I slept with my arms propped up on pillows on either side of me or above my head. I felt better when I woke up the next morning. They’re peeling a lot more now.
We left the hotel and went back to camp to demob. The trucks were cleaned and inspected. We reorganized and restocked our gear, returned things that had been signed out, collected the last of everyone’s laundry. Finally, we got on the road and started to make our way back to Colorado.
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