5 year tag
5 things i was doing 5 years ago
1. back home again and working in Yreka after 9 yrs working in Macdoel/Mt Hebron, California
2. colon surgery
3. drivng my muscle car the Geo Metro
4. dreaming of owning a junk truck
5. buying 2-3 cords of wood per year

5 things to do today
1. Genealogy - new family search, family search, ancestral file - Extraction records in Vang, Oppland, Norway has my great grandfather and his siblings, his parents, and his marriage.
2. Fast Sunday fasting for a good friend.
3.Kegel exercises
4. eat a bowl of vegetables
5. phone mom - she'll be 89 on the 15th of May

5 things i would do with a million dollars
1. homes for the kids
2. travel with Carolyn
3. service
4. none left
5.

5 places I have lived
1. Clarendon Hills, DuPage County, Illinois
2. Champaign/Urbana, Champaign County, Illinois College fall 1970 - June 1974
3. Canton, Fulton County, Illinois Nov 1973- Jan 1974
4. Somes Bar, Siskiyou County, California June 1973 -Oct 30 1973, June 1974-July 1975
5. Island Park, Fremont County, Idaho July 1975-Sept 1977
6. Fort Jones, Siskiyou County California Sep 1977 - March 1983
7. Greenview, Siskiyou County, California March 1983- present (Mt Hebron barracks 1997-2003)
8 Aug/Sep 1993 2 month detail to Moose Pass, Kenai Pennisula, Alaska

5 jobs i've held
1. summer help Village of Clarendon Hills
2. Georges Tree Service
3.Cafeteria worker University of Illinois
4.United Parcel Service - Holiday driver 10 holiday seasons
5. U.S. forest Service - 35 years

5 years from now
1. retired from FS
2. still going on fires
3. go on a mission with sweetie
4. spoiling grandkids
5. working on my junk truck

The Quarry of Life

Walking the cemeteries, we see fields of stone; stones representing the eternities of time. Each contains a life's story; a never ending story. As children we have skipped stones across the water. We marveled at our small accomplishment seeing the ripples created by the multiple encounters with the water; the ripples ultimately connecting together. With baptism we ripple the water once again. Longingly the stories of the stones wait for the ripples of water of baptism to connect their ripples with ours.
Nauvoo Quarry
From the stones of the limestone quarry at Nauvoo, the eternal stones of time were placed with loving care to create the Lord's House - His Temple. From the rural cemeteries containing their stones of life to the baptismal fonts of the temples of stone, the quarry connects the ripples of the stones across the water to an ever lasting life.



Nauvoo Temple

Favorite Family Pics

Crapo Creek view - Yesterday 15 Jan 2009 we went to the woods to review reforestation needs in Crapo Creek. Crapo Creek flows into the Salmon River below the Forks of the Salmon. You go up the Pollocks gulch road to get into the drainage. Its a steep one way in/out road system. The Hog Range is part of the south ridgeline of the drainage. The infamous Hog Fire started here in 1977. It burned 40,000 acres. Part of Crapo Creek burned in that fire. In 1987 most of Crapo Creek burned. We planted 1000's of acres there then. To get to the far side they used pack stings to carry the trees in. I was not involved in this planting effort as I was in charge of the fire salvage. So I was busy doing other things. So in 2008 we burned up a few thousand acres of Crapo Creek again. That is why we were out there yesterday; to schedule out our site prep and reforestation plans. We drove on some roads that I never had been on before. We ate lunch on the Hog Range ridgeline. The view was beautiful. Sourcraut Peak was just across from us which is the District boundary with Ukonom. Orleans Mtn was off to the SW. Far in the distance to the NW was the divide between the Klamath River drainage and the Smith River flowing to the coast. Sometimes I just can't believe I get paid to do what I do. Heavenly Fathers creations are my part of my lunch break. Then see the pic of my other office.

Southern Hospitality - Etawah Tennessee 1984

I just stumbled onto this pic at work so I thought I would blog it. Spring 1984 was very dry in the Southeast and arsonists were rampant. So they loaded up five 20 person crews from California in a military cargo plane ( I think a C140) at Redding. It was late March or early April 1984. Attached is a group pic of the Klamath's contribution. I'm the 3rd one from the left in the back row. We sat in web seats against the fuselage - all buckled in with webbing seat and shoulder harness. Could have used some ear plugs as it was not exactly a very quiet ride. The plane was so huge that i thought it would really struggle to get off the ground. No way - it took off it seamed almost vertical with seamless effort. That baby had some power. We landed in Asheville North Carolina. They fed us in a restaurant. That began the main theme of our trip- getting fed. The place mats on the tables had southern terms written on them. I was the only person on the crew that was from the "East" (anything east of the Sierra Nevada's). Growing up in Illinois I had heard all the terms except one - "go red up your room". Apparently it meant to go clean your room. The rest of the crew had a blast learning new terminology. I became their interpreter.
One thing about fire fighters, they do not travel with money. These were the days when by the wisdom of procurement officials , a restaurant could not include a tip in the charge to the government. So after the 2 waitresses worked their hearts out for us, they essentially got no tip. One waitress started crying. Fortunately a few years later the regulations were changed and tips could be placed in the restaurant bill. After the meal, we were bussed to the motel at Etawah Tennessee where we stayed for the duration of our detail. In those days they always put 2 to a room. They do not do that anymore when we travel. Most of the time now we get our own rooms.
The guys had no idea of what trees they were looking at. Back then I still remembered almost all the eastern harwoods. There were some southern hardwoods that I was not sure of. Dendrology was my favorite class in college. I'm afraid that time has taken its toll. Now I would really struggle to remember alot of the eastern hardwoods.
One day as we were digging line (duff layer was a bout 1 foot thick) someone scraped up a box turtle. They had never seen one before. So naturally I was the one who told them what it was. Springtime is usually when the Southeast has its draughts. They fight fire differently than out west. They go to the head of the fire with a tractor plow to head it off and then get the rest of the line in around it. In some places the duff layer was 1 to 1 1/2 feet thick. They told us just to dig down to the wet duff. We did not have to dig all the way down to dirt as you have to do out west.
The daily routine was to get fed breakfast, go rehab some fireline (throw fertilizer on the line and place the sod back in the line, get fed, go on a tour of one of the Districts, get fed lunch, rehab some more line (or go fight a fire if an arsonist had struck), get fed, finish rehab or fire fighting, go for dinner. One day they sent us over the the Smokey Mtn National Park to fight a fire. We got there late in the afteroon. So we went to work digging line and backfireing through most of the night. Guess the local town at the base of the mountain we were working on got quite the show. We missed going down the side ridge we were supposed to go down and wound up back firing an extra 300-400 acres. We really lit up the hillside. Just turned out to be a really good wildlife underburn. The towns folk were happy as it helped the turkey poulation and the hunting.
Etawah had an old FS compound. So I went looking to see what they might have ratholed in the nooks and crannies. Sure enough i found a box full of P38's. So I grabbed a half dozen. Unforutunately I lost my last one a few years ago when I took it off my key chain before I flew to a fire assignment. Since it has a sharp edge I figured it would not make it through TSA airport security. A P38 is a WWII canopener that came with the C rations. You can a get a modernized one in the camping section of almost any store. They just are not the same.
I don't recognize most in the photo. One of the guys in the photo was killed by a top of a snag he was falling while on fire in the Sierras. A day or so later we got hit the same storm the Sierra's got hit with. Siskiyou county got hit with 2000 lightning strikes August 30th, 1987.