Still

This was his fifth day working on the front line of the Colorado wildfire; the smoke and
heat tearing through his chest had begun to wear on him. He coughed as he reached for his
bandanna, which had slid down his face and was no longer covering his nose or mouth. He
adjusted the bandanna so that it might stop some of the burning air from reaching his lungs and
allow him to work in a slightly less painful environment. He tried to adjust the elastic straps of
his goggles, but while doing so, the band snapped and the goggles swung loose, also exposing his
eyes to the searing pain of smoke hitting a mucous membrane.

He swore as he made his way away from the trench-digging and back up the hill to a spot
where he could put down his shovel and take off his gloves in order to re-tie the knot on the over-
stretched elastic cord. He knew that he should have asked the boss for new goggles before they
came up here two days ago, but since he was the new one on this crew, he didn’t want to cause a
problem by asking for too many things right from the start. Maybe it was a shortsighted and
unwise choice to go to the front line with malfunctioning gear, but he’d just have to be resilient
and get through with what he had for now and buy some new things when he got home.
When he looked up from his thoughts, he realized that the rest of the crew had already
moved further around the slope and were working the other side. He quickly wrapped the
goggles back around his head, pulled up the bandanna, grabbed his shovel, and started at a
moderate pace to catch up.

As he made his way around the many downed trees and burned stumps, he was impressed
by the ability of a thin cleared area and a trench to stop an entire raging fire from continuing on
its path of destruction. He realized just how powerful the earth actually was and how, in one
instant, thousands of lives could be changed forever. If the fire managed to outrace them and get
past the fire lines, then all the people on the other side of the mountain would almost certainly
lose their houses, cars, yards, and all the belongings that they couldn’t take with them to
evacuate.

He met back up with the others who were steadily digging, chopping at roots, and digging
some more. He was caught up in the repetition of the work when suddenly, from behind him, a
massive Honeylocust tree splintered, crackled, and fell with a tremendous crash. Sparks flew
from the ground as the burning roots were crushed beneath a massive amount of two-hundred-year-old wood and bark.

The entire crew stared at the tree that now lay in the dirt, and he knew, without having to
ask, how powerful the fire actually was. If it could burn down an entire healthy tree, what was
stopping it from taking down twelve healthy firefighters? All that shielded them were hand tools
and the bare dirt.