Battalions
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| Announcement TV in the dining hall welcoming us back. |
Despite the miracle of being able to go back to base, our worries were far from over. Back at base, we began checking back in. Everyone who already lived in staff tent city was reassigned a new tent in camper tent city for the night. The reasoning had to do with keeping people farther away from the fire and because they were thinking about digging a fire break near staff tent city. After the dust settled in base, I spend the rest of the day working on teaching soft skills to my rangers. Again, there wasn’t much direction from upper leadership yet so my goal was to just keep training as best I could in hopes that we could still have campers arrive on time.
That continued the next day as upper leadership began forming a new plan for training. An all staff meeting was called the next afternoon. Everyone gathered on the Tooth of Time Traders lawn. A decision for the summer had been made. Several leaders talked, thanking us for our patience and giving an update on the fire. Dean Cow camp was completely gone but other than that, the rest of the structures on property were still standing. The meeting finished with Kevin Dowling who made the announcement we were waiting for. The campers planning on coming during the first half of the summer would be rescheduled or reassigned to another high adventure base. If the fire was under control and the weather cooperated by sending a decent enough amount of rain, July 15 would be the day campers would arrive.
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| Trash pick up along the road to Cimarron. |
The next few days were spent doing jobs around base--picking up trash, cleaning the shower houses--and continuing training that could be done. The option to go to another high adventure base to work for a month had been offered and many of my rangers had applied for and got those opportunities. So, we spent a lot of our time doing personal introductions (PIs) before everyone was scattered across the country. Saying goodbye to four of my kids was bittersweet. I was excited to see them go off to serve crews who wouldn’t be coming to Philmont but I was just getting to know them and wished I had more time to teach them.
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| The last goodbye as our crew sent off four of our new friends to other camps. |
The era of the battalion system began the day after most of the staff who took jobs off property had left. Over the past week, upper leadership had been working tirelessly to decide how to best make use of the time between now and when campers were scheduled to arrive. As the fire continued to burn through central country and head toward south country, they became worried about the start and spread of new fires. If the departments who didn’t work in basecamp (backcountry, ranger, and conservation) were to use this time to start thinning out the overgrowth of brush and trees in several places in south country, we could all get a good head start on making it safer to be in the backcountry
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| Green Battallion flow chart. |
The battalion system, made up of three battalions, split everyone up so as to make a rotation of people in and out of base. Within the battalions, there were divisions. Each division had at least one backcountry camp, one ranger training crew, and one conservation crew. Many had more than one of each. The leadership in the divisions were made of the camp directors (CDs), RTs, and conservation foremen while the leadership in the battalions were made up of each department's upper leadership. I was put in the Green Battalion where I was part of the Division 6 leadership. The most exciting part was that Katie somehow got placed in my division so I would be able to work with her every day!
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| Green Division 6 flag that I painted with a couple other people in the division. |
While the Red and Tan battalions were going to stay in base and do day runs, Green battalion was assigned to go to the Valle Vidal for the first 5-day set of work days. The morning of June 10, my battalion of several hundred people piled into a few school buses and headed off to the Valle. After the hour-plus bus ride, we were dropped off at McCrystal Creek camp. From there, we hiked over to Ring Place which was going to be the home base of sorts for this run. From there, my division was supposed to continue hiking over to Sealley Canyon where we were going to work for the first few days. John Celley, one of the conservation leaders, took three of the division leadership, Mary, Carrie, and me, in his truck to get us there before everyone else and explain what our project would be.
After doing a quick tour around our worksite, we sat down in the shade nearby to eat our trail meal lunch. After eating, we went back to the worksite and continued to look around. Our job was to rearrange the rocks at the bottom of a gully that had been created by erosion. The idea was that as water flowed through the gully, the rocks would catch the sediment and would begin filling the deep trench and turn it back into the small stream it was supposed to be.
Suddenly Carrie turned to John, said something that I couldn’t make out, and ran up to John’s pickup truck parked on the dirt road. We followed her and found her rummaging around our packs which were sitting in the bed of the truck. She found her pack and pulled out Benadryl which she took in haste. She then went over to a tree and propped herself against in as her breathing began to get more labored.
John explained to Mary and me that Carrie had an anaphylactic attack recently and she had started feeling another one coming on. We all crouched down around her, the panicked look on her face increased as her breathing continued to become more labored. The three of us, all WFRs, jumped right into action. Mary began taking vitals, I took notes and delivered them to John as he radioed the infirmary from his truck. The crew first aid kit, which had vials of epinephrine, was in my pack so in between taking notes, I went and got it. At that point, Carrie was panicked. The infirmary recommended epi and after assuring Carrie that it was a good idea, Mary gave her the shot. Almost instantly, Carrie started to relax, her breathing began to slow down and return to a more normal cadence.
Shortly after, the infirmary suburban came speeding down the dirt road, a trail of dust billowing behind it. Thankfully, they had been stationed at Ring Place so the drive was much shorter than if they had to come all the way from basecamp. The infirmary staff took Carrie’s vitals one more time but at this point, she was hyped up on adrenaline and back to her sassy self. They helped her into the car and loaded up her belongings to take her back to base for the night. After they drove off, John took Mary and me to the Seally Canyon yurt platform (the yurt itself was not yet set up) to meet up with our division. Because of the delay that came from the emergency, our division had already made it and begun setting up camp with the leadership of Tiff and Alex, the other RT and CD in our division.
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| Rocks rearranged for stream restoration. |
Many of us had slept on the yurt platform for the night. I woke up refreshed at 5am even tho the sunlight was only beginning to peek over the horizon. It was a good thing I felt so good because it was going to be a long, hot day. After breakfast, Mary and I lead our division down to our conservation site. With Carrie gone for the day, Chambers was the person who stepped up to be cons leadership but the two other girls in cons knew more about the science behind the project. This made it a group effort between the 5 of us to explain the project and organize everyone. We all worked hard for the day, digging up rocks and piling them in methodic patterns to encourage stream restoration. We worked into the heat of the afternoon until the job was done. Carrie was returned to us shortly before we were done, excited to see the work we had accomplished.
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| Moving rocks. |
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| Katie and I pose with our "rock pizza slice." |
Another comfy night on the platform and we were all up before the sun again. We packed up camp and began hiking over the ridge toward Ring Place. Somehow I was put in charge of navigation. I was mostly confident, but I didn’t want to admit that I had never done any real off-trail navigation before which made me a little nervous. As I made it to the top of the ridge, I spotted the Ring Place cabin and breathed a sigh of relief. The group spread out through the forest as we descended the ridge and before we knew it, we were making our way through the beautiful field that surrounds Ring Place.
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| Arriving at Ring Place |
With little time to rest, we were briefed on the invasives species job that we’d be doing for the day, grabbed our tools, and began hiking with the other divisions to our work site. It was a several mile hike before we got there. For the rest of the workday, the 100 or so people in our large group inspected every plant in the meadow following a stream. When an invasive plant (mostly thistle) was found, it was dug up and tossed in a trash bag.
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| The "is it invasive?" flow chart. |
The next day we returned to where we had left off, about 4.5 miles from Ring Place. With so much hiking, and in such a large group, we were only able to work for about an hour before it was lunchtime. After eating, we continued working as dark clouds began to roll in overhead, followed by bright flashes of lightning and fat raindrops. It wasn’t long before we got word to start hiking back. At first I continued to look for invasive plans as I walked, stopping to dig up thistle and houndstongue when I found any. But as the storm picked up, so did everyone else's pace. After a few miles, the rain was torrential. By the time we made it back to Ring Place, we were all spread out, just worried about getting shelter for ourselves.
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| Katie, Caroline, and I pose for a News and Photo staff member, Nick Castelli, after the rain had passed. |
The rain stopped within an hour and everyone began regrouping as they dried off. I was near the cabin and had not yet found many of my division members when someone came running up saying that a fire had started in the Valle and that we may be evacuated. I breathed out an exasperated sigh and went quickly to my division's campsite to let everyone know. A few of the other leaders had already got the news and were there trying to get a head count. There were still a couple people who hadn’t been seen by anyone since we all got back over an hour ago.
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| School buses arrive to pick us up. |
After a good amount of scrambling and getting information, my battalion was all gathered together and we packed up our camp. It was several more hours before the buses got there so it was nearly 10pm before we got back to base. Although it was late, the earlier-than-scheduled shower and extra night in my bed was very appreciated. Those 4 days had felt so much longer than a mere half of a week.
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| Slash pile. |
Our run still had one more day so we were introduced to our new friend, Tree Stand Improvement or TSI. This job became the main event for working most days. It involved thinning out underbrush and trees to reduce the risk of excessively large, unhealthy fires. We were bussed to the Lovers Leap road and dropped off in an area with smaller trees and a lot of brush. Armed with bow saws and loppers, each battalion was assigned a section of land and given instructions of what to cut down. Clueless, we all walked into the brush and began hacking down anything we could find that fit the description of what we were told to cut down. There was little order and we really didn’t know how to use our tools. But we had some fun while doing it.
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| Our first stump. |
Katie and I found a stump of a small tree that had been cut down but hadn’t been cut to the ground like we had been instructed to do. We took it upon ourselves to finish the job with a large bowsaw. The learning curve to use those saws was harder to get over than one might think so we sat there sawing at this stump with minimal luck for a good 20 minutes. We ended up getting two other people involved before it finally popped from its stubborn place in the ground. Katie and I were so proud of our first stump that we had to get a picture with it. It was the first of many. So. Very. Many.
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| The solid red is what property was affected. The red line shows how far the fire would have gotten if the firefighters hadn't been able to hold the southernmost line of the affected area. |
June 19th, the fire was declared 100% contained. It destroyed 26,387 acres or about ⅕ of the Philmont property but the damage of structures had been surprisingly minimal. In addition to Dean Cow camp being completely gone, Harlan was in severe shape but the cabins were still standing. Several other camps had seen the effects of the fire but were still standing and expected to be operable.
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| Burn severity report. |
One morning at breakfast, Crockett, a head consman, came up to me and asked me if I’d be interested in being a sawer. Still not fully awake and able to comprehend what all that would entail, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Sure, why not?” He told me to be available that Saturday and Sunday night for classroom training. I nodded my head and finished pouring the milk into my cereal as he walked away.
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| Rockies game. |
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| Red Rocks Amphitheater. |
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| Hiking into the burn area. |
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| New growth was already starting to peek out of the ash. |
The experience of walking into the blackened wasteland was somewhat surreal. I could imagine what it had looked like before the fire, beautiful and green--alive. I had watched this very hillside burn not even a month before. Now there was nothing but rocks, blackened tree trunks, and ash. I had expected to feel overwhelming sadness come over me but instead, a quiet, healing stillness sat in this landscape--not dead but sleeping, still breathing and already beginning to wake up. It wasn’t ugly to me, but a new kind of beauty. I finally felt at peace with the events of the past month.
Yes, it was hot. But not nearly as bad as I had expected. The work we were doing was satisfying and urgently helpful. The main water source for the village of Cimarron was at the bottom of the mountain and what water was left had become dangerously contaminated with ash and debris. We were building berms across the side of the mountain to catch the sediment so that it wouldn’t just run down the mountain when it rained. The berms were made from anything that we could find, mostly rocks, logs, and branches wedged around tree stumps and boulders that were left.
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| Soot-covered and ready for a shower. |
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The time for an official decision of if campers would come was approaching quickly and there still had been close to no rain. The day the Morras Creek fire started was when all hope began fading fast. It was another fire that started off property but quickly spread to our borders. This time, it was eating at the edges of the south country. Trained teams and cons people worked into the night to create barriers and wrap the southernmost cabins in space blankets to protect them. Letting the fire spread into the south country would surely be the end of anything we could do that summer.
Due to the new fire, all south country work came to a halt. The first day was an invasives work day in town. My division was taken to an open area near the highway that went through town and dropped off with shovels and trash bags. We spent the day digging up the weeds in that large plot. The grass was minimal so by the time we were done, it was mostly a dust bowl.
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| Slash pile queen. |
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July 5th was the set date to decide what was going to happen next concerning the rest of the season. Though there had been a few short-lived storms, the rainfall in the past month had been majorly underwhelming and nowhere near enough. With the addition of the Morras Creek fire burning, most people approached the staff gathering that morning hardly clinging to a thread of hope that any good news would come out of it. I had been preparing myself for the worst to be announced. I was ready to pack up and leave without much complaint if that was what was the only option left. In fact, I didn’t want participants to come anymore. The dire situation of the backcountry and the idea of being responsible for some many people spread out all over the property scared me. If another fire broke out, the evacuation process would be so many times more complicated. As sad as I was at the thought of not taking out crews and watching my rangers do the same, I was much more concerned about the safety of everyone involved.
The mood was somber as everyone gathered on the same lawn that we were sitting on during the previous big announcement. There was still hope back then. Today was different. There wasn’t much loud, happy talking. Just half smiles and hushed talking between friends. The suspense, what little there was, didn’t last long. It was confirmed that all treks would be canceled for the remainder of the summer, though all PTC programs would continue with needed modifications. For the first time in the 80 years of operation, the Philmont backcountry was closed to all overnight trekkers for the entire summer.
Except for all necessary operational base camp departments, all departments would be dissolved into the conservation department to continue TSI work. Everyone had the choice to stay and officially work in conservation or return home. The choice had to be made and reported by the 7th. Until then, we were all given days off to process the news and make our decisions. Initially, my reaction was of course I’d stay. I could finish my saw training and continue to do my little part in preserving my favorite place in the world. But then other options were presented to me. More and more friends made the decision to leave. First Katie, then Teddy, Jon, Miriam. So many people that I had spent all my free time with would suddenly be gone in a matter of a few days. I began liking the idea of taking the rest of the summer easy. What would I do without all my friends anyway? I was torn.
I began those days of free time interviewing my 4 rangers who were still there and calling the other ones who were still at their off-property jobs. I wrote evaluations for the rangers who had stayed. I poured out my praises for them in my writing. My appreciation and respect for them had grown as I had watched them valiantly march through the summer, cheerful and resilient. I was honored to have worked with them, feeling less as a superior to them and more as my equals. My role as an RT had been short but my love for those 10 people had blossomed easily nonetheless. I was so grateful that I had taken the job of RT.
Because the schedules were to stay the same for a little while longer, I ended up with another two days off with a day of TSI in there. I used that time to spend time with friends in any way I could. One day I went to Red River, another I climbed the Tooth. I spent time bumming around base and Cimarron. I didn’t so much care what I did as long as it was with friends, especially the ones leaving.
In the end, I decided to stay to finish saw training and keep cutting down trees. Gratefully, I was able to bring up my end date by a couple weeks. Originally I had agreed to an end date two days before school started but I knew a little more recovery time would be needed after such a different summer than I had planned on.
The completion of my saw training was soon after that decision. Two days were spent in the field learning how to fell and buck trees. After weeks of hand sawing everything, this was so satisfying. It was also quite nerve-wracking. During the classroom training, I had learned about how to safely fell these giant trees that could kill me in one blow but now that I had to actually do it and trust my judgment. I was nervous. The first day wasn’t too bad because all I did was limb and buck logs.
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| My first felled tree. |
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| Melanie, Miriam, and I puddle jumping. |
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