Probie V

Rope and equipment bags on my back, ready to go.  You always start with the highest hopes.  There’s a missing hunter, the night is getting colder, and he is somewhere out there.  It’s our job to find him, and bring him back.  The UTV has left and Search Team #1 is assembled and waiting for orders.  Captain Barger is in command and he notices the two packs on my back.  He suggests I set them down and conserve energy until we move out.  It’s a suggestion rather than an order.  So I don’t. 

Farm fields, forests and wetlands with oxygen rich air less than a thousand feet above sea level.  A couple packs weighing forty or fifty pounds.  No two miles of elevation.  No avalanche, rock fall or cliff danger common to the mountain climbing thing.  No fifty or more miles of on my own problem solving.  Piece of cake, the packs stay on.  Ready to go, Captain. 

The cold night ended well into the colder morning, and not as we had hoped.  The hunter had died in his tree stand.  The rescue became a recovery.  A difficult, physically exhausting recovery over terrain impassible by any vehicle, with no path, trail or navigation aid better than the moon, hanging low in the sky.  A recovery so difficult there have been three debriefings for those of us who carried the hunter out.  You start with high hopes, you end with the brotherhood bond of a difficult task, commonly shouldered.  Rest in peace.

A few days later, the more typical tasks are being taught in class.  It’s our last before we are freshly minted Entry Level Firefighters, newly certified by no less an authority than the State of Wisconsin to enter burning buildings.  With the highest of hopes. 

We are down to eighteen or nineteen in the class.  Two more tries for the whole class to get all the gear on in under two minutes, a group check of our answers to the final exam, and then a dozen or more actual fires to put out, in teams of three or four.  I’m on a four-person team, with Brody and Peyton and someone I won’t name.  I know for a fact that if you added up my teammate’s ages, they’d still need a second-grader to match mine. 

Brody and Peyton have been my teammates since Wes left, and we work well together.  Earnest, unassuming young men, Brody and Peyton are fine young firefighters.  They have the right mix of physicality, can-do spirit and openness to acknowledging that they (we) have much to learn.  The addition to our team is … not as blessed.  There’s an evolution he just can’t do, and it seems a combination of physical stature and resistance to instruction on technique.  I’m reminded of the ballplayers on Colin’s team who were just not big enough to make the jump from sophomore to varsity, and my heart breaks a bit. 

Breaks a bit on the physical side.  Does not break at all for the resistance to instruction on technique.

Not so long ago (in geologic terms) a mountain climbing guide offered up some technique wisdom that has stayed with me.  Forever pace.  The guide’s point was to find a climbing pace that you could sustain, for hours, or days.  Too slow, and you’ll not achieve your objective in the time you have.  Too fast, and you’ll burn yourself out well before the summit.  Forever pace (and hydration and a bag full of peanut M&Ms) is the answer. 

Between classes at the moment, and have filled the time with forever pace on the hose tower stairs at the fire station.  We ain’t fancy enough to have a Stairmaster at the station.  So, throw a SCBA tank on my back, grab an axe, and go up and down the tower stairs.  Not forever, but somewhere near an hour at a time, sans M&Ms.  There’s some math involved as I monitor heart rate and keep track of the laps up and down and how each seven-inch step chips away at the elevation difference between Poynette (840 feet above sea level) and Denali (20,310 feet).  There’s also thinking / self-debriefing, every now and then. 

But, mostly, there’s quiet singing along with the iPod and the cheerful salve of forever pace.