Young Men and Fire

In his 74th year author Norman Maclean (River Runs Through It and Other Stories) devoted himself to researching the 1949 Mann Gulch, Montana, forest fire which claimed the lives of 13 young Smokejumpers. When Maclean died in 1990 at the age of 87 the book remained unfinished. It was later completed by colleagues and published in 1992 as Young Men and Fire.

I read the book a number of years ago, and thought of it as soon I learned of the deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona. Much about the two events sounds eerily similar, though I neither recall nor know the details of either of them now. As I have looked through Young Men and Fire I have remembered that it went into more detail than I could absorb at the time, interspersed with Maclean’s reflections on old age as he had attained it and on what it must be like to die young.

I offer the following passage from near the end of Young Men and Fire in memory of the young whose lives were consumed by fire in Arizona:

“To project ourselves into (the firefighters’) final thoughts will require feelings about a special kind of death–the sudden death in fire of the young, elite, unfulfilled, and seemingly unconquerable. As the elite of young men, they felt more surely than most who are young that they were immortal. So if we are to feel with them, we must feel that we are set apart from the rest of the universe and safe from fires, all of which are expected to be put out by ten o’clock the morning after Smokejumpers are dropped on them. As to what they felt about sudden death, we can start by feeling what the unfulfilled always feel about it, and, since the unfulfilled are many, the Book of Common Prayer cries out for all of them and us when it begs that we all be delivered from sudden death.

“‘Good Lord, deliver us.

‘From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder; and from sudden death,

‘Good Lord, deliver us.’

“One thing is certain about their final thoughts–there was not much size to them. Time and place did not permit even superior young men dying suddenly ‘to see their whole lives pass in review,’ although books portray people preparing to die as seeing a sort of documentary movie of their lives. Everything, however, gets smaller on the way to becoming eternal. It is also probable that the final thoughts of elite young men dying suddenly were not seeing or scenic thoughts but were cries or a single cry of passion, often of self-compassion, justifiable if those who cry are justly proud. The two living survivors of the Mann Gulch fire have told me that, as they went up the last hillside, they remember thinking only, ‘My God, how could you do this to me? I cannot be allowed to die so young and so close to the top.’ They said they could remember hearing their voices saying this out loud.”

-----

We leave tomorrow for another road trip, this one west. If I notice or experience unusual, funny, touching, or just plain weird things I will share them with you. Not a travelogue, thank you. Check in from time to time to join us on our journey.