Like the bomb on Nagasaki all over again.

I drank the Kool-Aid hard, shoved it into my brain through a metal IV tube, rewired every neuron for this one relentless purpose. Being a Hotshot.

FINDING FEATHER BY NICOLE PEPAJ 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 136

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I’m on some broke-off ridgeline writing this on my phone, eating the crackers in a Chilli Mac MRE.

The view from here is scorched earth, ash-grey for miles like the bomb on Nagasaki all over again. The air smells like napalm and sage.

Men have fought fire since Tribes ruled the Great Plains, before horses, before hand tools. The land has always burned, and we’ve always fought it the same way. Planes and drones help. But fire will always need men and women on foot to meet it.

And oh the people who fight fire: ex-gang members, discharged veterans, displaced intellectuals, lost college athletes.

This is the way.

I am like a kid in the Marines. That’s what this is to me, my Marine Corps. I drank the Kool-Aid hard, shoved it into my brain through a metal IV tube, rewired every neuron for this one relentless purpose.

Being a Hotshot.