Field Program

The fire line that needed a light touch up, maybe just brushing off pine needles from the bare mineral soils, as the project partner predicted, has faded with time beneath stubborn clumps of bear grass. With each Pulaski swing, we make our way up over the hill. Digging in fire line style in the hot sun, I become one part of a greater body, that of my whole crew, digging in a disjointed rhythm as we unearth clumps of sod. Bear grass splinters from its stubby root balls, and bunchgrasses form a fibrous mat. Spindly huckleberry branches criss-cross the growing fire line, and with a dull snap of the pulaski's axe end, they cartwheel back into the grass. Plumes of dust dye our boogers black as memories of fires are held in the scaly quilted layers of ponderosa bark, and hidden, catalogued in their annual growth rings.

My fingers are stained with huckleberry juice, blistered, calloused, and re-blistered under the repetitive friction of swinging the hand tools. In the late afternoon, I return to the unit after my post-work snack, titanium mug in hand, and slowly, patiently drop huckleberries into the bottom of my cup. During breaks, I ravenously pull berries into my open shirt front and eat them by the handful. Returning, I gather them gently, feeling the moment of resistance between my fingertips before the berry plinks into the bottom of my mug. The percussion dulls as the cup brims with huckleberries. Each one’s intricate pink calexes like tiny irises. Tomorrow, a berry, stuck to the bottom of my mug, will float in my coffee, and I will return again to the unit, and take up my Pulaski, and keep digging.