What fire taught me

During the 2020 and 2021 Summers, I worked as a forest firefighter for the US Bureau of Land Management in central Oregon on both a hand crew and a type 6 engine (fire truck). A typical day entailed a morning debrief with the other station personnel, checking engines were ready for the day, physical conditioning, and then the wait for a fire call. When the call came, I was in the truck to chase down smoke in wherever wilderness. Sometimes the fire required 1 afternoon of work, and other times it escalated into 5 days of digging line and 5 nights sleeping on the ground a walking distance from the frontline. Today I am a PhD student within a research group, and what fire taught me shapes how I approach my research and this team.

Fire suppression strategies implemented a means to control the fire while always maintaining the safety of all persons involved. Digging a small trench (line) around the perimeter removed potential fuel from the fire’s reach. In practice, this meant I was on a team cutting brush or digging a line for hours on end while staring at a forest fire. These physically demanding moments made me susceptible to narrowing in on the immediate task, the next branch, the next root. Tunnel vision is a common pitfall, and made me prone to walking into an unsafe position when I didn’t keep my peripherals up to what mattered: did the task help the fire strategy, how was the team doing, was I safe? In my research, it can be easy to narrow my focus on my projects or a tangent on the research project. Helping groupmates with their experiments, involving undergrads in the research, and organizing department events matter too. Research groups are teams, and keeping my eyes and ears open to the surroundings goes a long way.

The job was arduous at times. 16-hour days digging line with a 15 lb pack, sleeping on a mat out in the open wilderness because pitching a tent meant less time sleeping, and repeating for days on end demanded mental fortitude. Believing in everyone around me made the taxing work more enjoyable and boosted team morale. We moved as a team, got to eat lunch once all our tasks were done, and got to sleep once everyone was at the sleeping spot. Sharing water and blister covers with those who needed it, and accepting the offered snack when I needed it eased the whole team to reach its objective. Research groups cultivate knowledge in the group, develop experimental and computational techniques, and act as an incubator to grow ideas. These are intellectually demanding tasks, and I believe in the team to make them a reality. I believe each member of the research group can discover the next frontiers of science.

A complete hand crew had roughly 20 people on it, led by a captain. Each crew was broken into sub-teams designated to individual tasks; for example, scouting, digging line, or chainsaw work. Being an effective team usually required spreading out over a range where handheld radio communication became necessary to maintain contact. I could not see what the collective team saw. This setting required I listened, verbally confirmed the tasks I was given, carried them out accordingly, and stayed posted with the crew over radio amid a forest fire. In research, I focus on pushing the current bounds of science in my field. This objective requires knowledge of the current literature, deciphering the experimental data I record, and knowing the state-of-the-art in my field and neighboring fields. Myself, each of my groupmates, collaborators, and advisors make up a team spaced around the challenge. Effective verbal communication with the team allows me to see the task from more than my angle.