A Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association bestseller
"A fascinating look" (Esquire) inside the world of smokejumpers, the
airborne firefighters who parachute into the most remote and rugged
areas of the United States, confronting the growing threat of nature's
blazes.
Forest and wildland fires are growing larger, more numerous, and
deadlier every year -- record drought conditions, decades of forestry
mismanagement, and the increasing encroachment of residential housing
into the wilderness have combined to create a powder keg that threatens
millions of acres and thousands of lives every year. One select group of
men and women are part of America's front-line defense: smokejumpers.
The smokejumper program operates through both the U.S. Forest Service
and the Bureau of Land Management. Though they are tremendously skilled
and only highly experienced and able wildland firefighters are accepted
into the training program, being a smokejumper remains an art that can
only be learned on the job. Forest fires often behave in unpredictable
ways: spreading almost instantaneously, shooting downhill behind a stiff
tailwind, or even flowing like a liquid. In this extraordinarily rare
memoir by an active-duty jumper, Jason Ramos takes readers into his
exhilarating and dangerous world, explores smokejumping's remarkable
history, and explains why their services are more essential than ever
before.
