We've been working more or less non-stop since I got back to FSJ. Since April 25, I haven't had a single day off and only 3 days without fires. It's been amazing - it's never been this hot and dry up here this early in the season.
This week, I'm acting as a squad boss because a few of the regular squad bosses are away doing courses. It's been a pretty steep learning curve. I had one day as a crew leader on a fire, and the next day, I was in charge of the whole fire. I definitely did a few things wrong, but learned from my mistakes. Overall, though, I think that it went pretty well. I've always been one to care about the quality of my work, but I never realized just how much more I would care when I actually had to sign my name to a fire and guarantee that it was out. Especially a really big, ugly fire that we spent way too little time on and with far too few resources. I'm pretty sure it's done with, but I've still got my fingers crossed that it won't come back to haunt me.
We haven't had much time for hanging out yet this year, because we've been leaving early for fires most mornings, but we did get together for quite a shin-dig on Friday night. We knew that we had to start work at 6:30 the next morning, but we were told we'd only be on the fire for a few hours and then we could sleep all afternoon. So, we partied hard. For some (not me this time, fortunately), way too hard. The next day, there were a lot of sorry looking rhinos on the fire line. And we were all even more sorry when we learned that there was way more work that we thought and that we'd be working for 16 hours that day. Ouch!
In any case, fire season is off to a record-breaking start and I can only hope that it keeps up its current pace for the next few months...
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