Forest fires are both the subject and the main characters in this
mesmerizing account by a MacArthur Prize-winning professor who
spent 15 summers as a "Longshot" firefighter. The result is a heady
combination of poetic prose, analytic language (trees are "large
fuels"), and ecological polemic directed at the bureaucratic
infighting that afflicts the two great administrators of the
nation's wilderness - the Park Service, for whom Pyne worked, and
the National Forest. Pyne isn't out to tell heroic stories here. He
captures the tedium that drives the Longshots and the SWFFs (Hopi
and Navajo fire crews) to pray for smoke on the Grand Canyon's wild
North Rim - smoke means fire, and fire means overtime pay, plus
excitement. The descriptive passages that bring the reader up to
speed on the nature of fire and park bureaucracy echo the tedium;
these are punctuated by short, dramatic scenes of the crews chasing
after reported fires. In two- and four-man teams, the Longshots
plunge into the wilderness, racing to beat the National Forest
crews; wearing rubber waterbladders, chain-saws, and other tools,
dining off C-rations, they drive battered pickups as far as roads
will allow, then dive into the brash and canyonland. Often they
can't find the fire, or it's a false alarm. At other times, two men
will single-handedly tame a potential holocaust with the elan of
professional athletes. Pyne's outrage smoulders at the
death-by-bureaucratic-fiat of any kind of intelligently organized
firefighting program. The Park Service in particular comes off
poorly - politicized, mismanaged by desk warriors so obsessed with
their public image that they will halt a preventative burn program
because it's too smoky and alarms the tourists. This dense but
rewarding book should add a "large fuel" of its own to the debate
over our endangered wilderness. (Kirkus Reviews)
Reprint (of 1989 ed.) with a new preface. Pyne (American Studies,
Arizona State U., MacArthur awardee) recounts his 15 years as an
active firefighter on the North Rim. A lyric, articulate, swift
book. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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