It was a normal Wednesday. As normal as you can find living in a Young Life camp in the middle of nowhere. One of the guys had family in camp and it was a pizza night, just like every Wednesday. We were sitting in the house, preparing for bible study when flashes of light started shooting out of the sky and landing all around us. The percussion of some of these blasts shook buildings, scared animals, and started fires.
As the camp was scrambling people to get them to fire lines, and protect the villages, Mark 2 was scrambling to fuel villages in case of an evacuation. Camp staff managed to control the nearest of the many fires around property and we never had to evacuate, but that didn't mean the danger to the camp was over.
That night I asked, begged, pleaded to go out on fire crews but was told that I needed to stay in camp in case we needed to drive to guys to a place of safety. I was frustrated watching vehicles drive up seldom used roads in and around camp. I guess my boss had a valid point, but I would rather have been out on lines.
With the end of the day Thursday, however, there became urgent need of more and more people to man the lines. I was officially on my weekend and I could do what I wanted, so I went to war. A paniced voice hollered out over the radio calling for every available body to man lines. I was ready and available and hadn't been out all the night before so I was fresh legs.
It turns out that your legs will carry you even when your body doesn't want them to. You can walk up and down hills fighting fire until you are about ready to drop from fatigue. Looking in to the eyes of guys that hadn't slept in almost two days, you could tell they would still willingly walk up another hill even if their body was screaming for rest. Several people were indeed sent home and more of the camp staff showed up for fire crews as the weekend approached. It was a new battle, they had fresh crews.
So up and down, through smoke, through fire, through burned out remains of forrest that I used to enjoy on my hikes, I walked. Much of the time carrying an extra 60 pounds of gear, but I never seemed to tire. Something was lending strength to not just me, but everyone. Looking back on it now, it's quite clear that much of what strength we didn't have to use was coming from God.
The terrain around camp is steep. The actual camp is the lowest spot on the property and it was rather easy to keep the fires from spreading into the camp proper, but that doesn't mean the lines didn't run up and down ridges surrounding the camp. I spent the better part of two days perched on a hill above what is called West Village. It's a mostly abandon part of camp that was in use recently for the contractors as they built the new Creekside camp.
On one side of the hill was a clear view of the houses, on the other was the smoking remains of a juniper forrest that was burned out and still trying to smolder back to life. I've dug myself knee deep in hot ash to save trees that it didn't matter if they burned or not, and many of them still did. As of right now, the fire on that ridge has not spread.
Unfortunately, with that victory, and a few others around camp, there is a large section in the southeast of camp that we can do nothing about right now. There are crews up fighting it as I type and the land is not friendly to the unexperienced hiker. I enjoy the tops of these hills that are burning now, but never the hike to them. Fires are clearly visible from my house, and the ridgelines were glowing last night with encroaching fire. I'm off the line today, as I had to go back to work, but that doesn't mean there aren't 50 other people up cutting lines in the earth to hold back the inferno.
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