Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

Amazon.com
To most of us, the smokejumping world is as alien as Mars or the deep seabed. Yet for Murry Taylor--as for many other Alaskan smokejumpers--it's not just an annual summer job, it's his heart's blood and life's core. He, with all the smokejumpers, strains yearly to achieve the three-mile qualifying run in the requisite 22.5 minutes or under, his physical pain superceded by the fearsome anxiety that he might not make it, that he might never again do what sounds more like a nightmare than a cherished dream: parachute repeatedly from 3,000 feet out of small planes into searing fires.

Taylor is 50 and has been smokejumping since 1965. Jumping Fire, his first book, focuses on one particularly incendiary summer in 1991, from April 29 to September 24, recording the day-to-day minutiae of an Alaskan smokejumper (including the tale of that summer's doomed love affair) while interspersing the narrative with memories accumulated from his nearly three decades of smokejumping and stories by and about his colorful colleagues.

The writing is vivid and immediate. Taylor clarifies the workings of parachute drogue release handles, Stevens connections, and cut-away clutches, but he doesn't inundate us with alienating terminology. The technical details are explained as they come up in the many scenes and anecdotes that shape the book. There are stories of jumps that ended in strangulation and multiple fractures and jumps that ended more comically, with the hapless jumper planted deep in a puddle of duck excrement, or landing on top of a moose. The guys rib each other mercilessly, perform their preflight gear checks religiously, and come to the assistance of their jump partners with a dedication that is inspiring.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Wildfire West

In his gripping memoir Jumping Fire, veteran smokejumper Murry Taylor delivers unprecedented insights into the day-to-day life of Alaska's wilderness fire warriors. Through detailed journal entries that span one hellish summer, Taylor produces a frontline dispatch that indelibly recreates the terrifying realities of his all-consuming profession. From grueling training runs to the thrill of the jump and down into the monstrous fires themselves, this extraordinary record of do-or-die heroism is bound to become smokejumping's triumphant answer to The Right Stuff.

For over 30 years, Taylor has spent his summers leaping out of airplanes and parachuting into raging wildfires. He is a smokejumper -- part wilderness paratrooper, part firefighter -- a career that provides daily doses of an adventure junkie's favorite cocktail of adrenaline mixed with blood, sweat, and tears.

Much has been made in the media of the legendary bravado of smokejumpers and their noble task: to swoop out of the sky and contain raging infernos that threaten to gobble up property, acreage, and lives. Taylor's account certainly fans the flames of that myth, but he also manages to put a human face on its heroes while showing the gritty flip side to the glory. With intimate candor, Taylor's tell-it-like-it-is prose renders the surreality of the smokejumper's life in three palpable dimensions.

Each chapter is a series of journal entries that chronicle the nuts-and-bolts of the job through one incendiary May-September fire season. Along the way, readers are introduced to the tools of the trade, learn the ABC's of dousing blazes, and get to know the other jumpers in all their blustery, swaggering mountain-man glory.

As lightning continually ignites miles of parched Alaskan wilderness, Jumping Fire is punctuated by wild, real-time adventure sequences both in the air and on the smoldering ground. Even readers familiar with the spectacle of smokejumping will be awestruck by the sheer endurance and fortitude of these diehard personalities and the immensity of their task.

A forest fire turns out to be a lot more sinister than Smokey let on, and it's common for smokejumpers to forego days of sleep to put a blaze to bed. Not that most folks will blaze a trail to the local Forestry Service outpost in hopes of signing on as smokejumpers, but Taylor's hardly recruiting -- he's just letting the world know that an occupation this extreme really does exist.

Harrowing tales abound: close calls, gruesome accidents, personal tragedies. Airplane engines burst into flames, parachutes fail to deploy, jumpers are knocked unconscious as they careen into mountainsides, or else are left dangling from towering trees. Then there are the fires. Taylor alternates between breathless descriptions of the eerie beauty of a forest in flames and accounts of the all-too-real danger of blow-ups that can swallow up smokejumpers' lives in a heartbeat.

Much like traditional firemen, smokejumpers display an unflagging allegiance to duty, plus an intense camaraderie. Exhausting and frustrating, the job demands total commitment; but nobody's forcing these guys -- they have an inborn love for their work. The jumpers concur that they're "living a dream." But in the back of each man's mind is the knowledge that the dream can quickly melt into a nightmare -- as Taylor discovers himself on an Idaho mountainside: We were running in fire. I had often imagined what it must be like to be trapped. The blinding heat, the horror. The fire is on you. Your body is burning. That detached observer within recognizes that your worst fear has, in fact, become your final reality. You are burning to death.

All this fear, all this danger, all this adrenaline -- at what cost? When removed from the drama of countless conflagrations, Taylor allows hints of a revealing melancholy, for the personal cost of his profession has been high, including his marriage. His is a life apart. "[M]ost normal people are at home sleeping in beds, with pillows and sheets, and maybe even other people, we're out here acting like a bunch of brush apes, running chain saws all night, swilling coffee that tastes like battery acid, eating stale candy bars, spilling gas and oil all over ourselves, filling our eyes with sawdust, ruining our hearing, and then lying in the dirt like a bunch of pigs." This recurring doubt haunts Taylor's thoughts, but having learned the lessons of his job, he stamps it out and gets right back to work.

Taylor's three decades of experience give him an educational and informative scope on his profession. The vocabulary can be a tangle for novices, but a consultation with the book's glossary will quickly demystify jargon like "burnout," "scratch line," or "snookie." The free, natural use of smokejumping argot adds yet another layer of authenticity to Taylor's on-the-scene observations.

In many ways, the narrative of Jumping Fire has the feel of a war story, and for all intents and purposes, the smokejumper's life is one of the closest peacetime equivalents. Smokejumping language further reinforces the parallels with talk of "air attacks," "cargo drops," and "barracks life." Taylor forcefully illustrates that doing battle with Mother Nature is every bit as hazardous as life on the war front, except these commandos aren't getting in a plane to exchange fire, but to extinguish it.

In the end, what impresses most is the indomitable spirit of not only Murry Taylor but this entire passionate breed of backwoods flyboys that sacrifice convention in exchange for the unique rewards of wrangling fire in a vast, unpredictable wilderness. Jumping Fire is a remarkable tribute to the brave souls who risk life, limb, and love to quell the scorching flames of nature's fury.

—Brad Hampton

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A smokejumper recounts his three decades parachuting out of planes and fighting wildfires in the rugged West.

During one incendiary summer, Murry Taylor kept an extensive journal of his day-to-day activities as an Alaskan smokejumper. It wasn't his first season fighting wildfires, and he's far from being a rookie-he's been on the job since 1965. Through this narrative of one busy season, Taylor reflects on the years of training, the harrowing adrenaline-fueled jumps, his brushes with death, the fires he conquered, and the ones that got away. It's a world full of bravado, one with epic battles of man versus nature, resulting in stories of death-defying defeats, serious injury, and occasionally tragedy. We witness Taylor's story; learn of the training, preparation, technology, and latest equipment used in fighting wildfires; and get to know his fellow smokejumpers in the ready room, on the tundra, and in the vast forests of one of the last great wilderness areas in the world.

Often thrilling and informative and always entertaining, Taylor's memoir is one of the first autobiographical accounts of a legendary career.

About the Author:

Murry A. Taylor has been a smokejumper since 1965. He divides his time between Alaska and northern California. This is his first book.

SYNOPSIS

A gut-wrenching and compelling memoir "for readers who like books like The Perfect Storm" (Library Journal)

FROM THE CRITICS

Caroline Fraser - Outside Magazine

A grand adventure that captures a lifestyle of violent oscillations between terror, boredom, and exhaustion.

John Holkeboer - Wall Street Journal

The author writes with authority and hair-raising detail about parachuting into remote locations to fight fires.

A grand adventure that captures a lifestyle of violent oscillations between terror, boredom, and exhaustion.

Outside

A grand adventure that captures a lifestyle of violent oscillations between terror, boredom, and exhaustion.

KLIATT

Being a smokejumper is a dangerous and difficult career. The author details his long life in fire fighting; it began in 1965 and didn't end until the summer of 2000. He was the oldest person ever to do the job, and this book is filled with stories about different fires in his career. It is also a look at a man wondering if he has done the best he could with his life. A glossary of terms helps with the understanding of all the equipment used in this demanding and compelling occupation. Older students who have an interest in smokejumping will enjoy every hazardous moment that he describes. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Harcourt, 459p., $14.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Barbara Jo McKee; Libn/Media Dir., Streetsboro H.S., Stow, OH , September 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 5) Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Forget fiction. Jumping Fire is the best action/adventure thriller I've read in years! Murry Taylor is one terrific writer.  — Patrick McManus

From the Author of Fire on the Mountain: the True Story of the South Canyon Fire

Grab your boots and chutes. Murry Taylor puts you in the harness for a thrill-a-page account of smokejumping based on his already-legendary career. You see the stupendous landscapes, feel the crush of the brutal landings, work to exhaustion, and then hike out eager to be back on board, ready to jump again. Taylor has lived the dream; now he lets the rest of us in on it.?  — John Maclean

From the Author of Hole in the Sky

Jumping from airplanes, fighting the fires, beating the odds, losing the new love? Murry Taylor gives us a modern story of adventure and on-the-job heroism. Nothing touristy or politically correct about it, Jumping Fire is the actual thing, and a vivid compelling story.?  — William Kittredge

I've spent over thirty years fighting fires and leading fire-fighting organizations and Murry Taylor's Jumping Fire is an insightful and passionate account of the pain, pressure, sacrifices and rewards that make up the life of the seasonal firefighter. He captures the physical and mental commitment that the job demands and his passages on fire-fighting episodes are excellent.  — Pat Kelly, Former Assistant Director of the National Fire and Aviation Program, U.S.B.A. Forest Service