"I think I have dirt in my ears!": the day I unwittingly became a firefighter in my own backyard

Well, I can cross "join volunteer fire fighting" off my bucket list.

It actually wasn't even on my bucket list to begin with, but at any rate, now I can say I've done it. I have fought a fire. And not just any fire. This one was in my own backyard. And I didn't have a crew to fight with. Just me and my dad. Fighting the dickens out of a fast-moving grass fire, from a diesel-propelled bonfire that got wildly out of control. Fighting the fire with nothing but rakes and brute strength. (Okay, so I might have embellished the truth a little right there... even though it felt like the truth at the time). At any rate, I'm getting ahead of myself...

So, the story goes like this: (And this really is how it happened). My dad came home for some meetings in the states. We were delighted to have him home. It had fortunately coincided with the rodeo, so we were able to go to that, which is something my dad loves to do. And we went, even he with a sprained ankle, because he enjoys going so much.

Something else my dad loves to do in the limited time he has at home, is hop on his tractor and get busy doin' stuff. I love this about my dad. He is a go-getter, and he loves being on his tractor and being out in the pasture. And although he'd come home with a sprained ankle, it didn't stop him from going to the rodeo and it wasn't going to stop him from getting on his tractor.

This particular day he decided to finish an unfinished job from Christmas; that being, burn down the burn pile, or rather, burn piles, since there were two, in the back pasture. So, the kids played in the backyard while grandpa mowed down the pasture and got the tree limbs and stumps in two big piles. Occasionally, Andrew or Aubrey would say, "I want to ride on the tractor!" So we'd go back a little ways, get grandpa's attention and then he'd take the kids for a spin. It was a fun way to spend the day.

Eventually, he got all the limbs situated in two different piles. At that point, he came in from the pasture and went to get some diesel to fuel the fire. He came home and I saw him from the porch put the fuel in a bug sprayer container (you know, the kind with pump and long hose that sprays) and went out on his tractor to the last acre of the pasture. We watched him head out and Andrew saw him riding away and he told me, "I want to go see grandpa!!! I want to ride on the tractor!" And although he'd already gone for a ride, for some reason I decided to go out. I'd not gone that far back into the pasture in years, because I'm afraid of snakes, so we walked out very carefully so as to avoid any. Once we got out there, one conflagration had burst out and upward hugely, and the other fire was getting going. Andrew came and sat on the tractor and we watched. It was interesting. I'm sure it was satisfying for dad, to watch these huge branches and limbs go up in smoke and flames, to finish a job he'd begun several months ago.

And then the wind started gusting.

And then I started noticing... every time the wind blew, even just a little, the perimeter of the fire closest to the back fence would inch out as the fire ignited the very dry grass around it. Andrew, sitting atop the tractor said, "wow! fire!"

I said, nervously, "hey, dad, do you want it spreading that much?"
He said, "It's not spreading."
I said, "yes, it is, look over there."

Dad hobbled over, (remember he has a sprained ankle), to go check it out. I watched, not yet alarmed, as he went around the perimeter of the fire stamping it out with his foot.

The wind kept blowing.

From our higher perch on the tractor seat, I watched as more of the fire crept out of the boundary of his bonfire and into the dry grass surrounding the blaze. This all happened in a matter of minutes. I could see it started spreading out, no longer in an even wave, but in reaching, finger-like, trails of flames that branched out in every direction and seemed to me like more fire than could be madly stamped out by one man and his good foot. As soon as dad stamped out one area of flames, more flames would branch out somewhere else. It was heading east, for the back fence and the forest beyond.

This is when I got alarmed. How long would it take to spread to the back fence and the forest??? And, could we put the fire out by then??? There would be a point of no return. Where else would it spread?? Would it head this way, toward me and Andrew? I wondered this as I held Andrew in my lap. I had no idea. But probably a moving fire was no place for a three year old child, regardless of its direction. And there was no way I could help Dad if Andrew were still out here.

As I ran back to the house at full speed in my cute strappy sketchers flats (Not the best footwear for running over the rough, uneven, muddy, divot-ed-by-tractor-wheel pasture holding a 25-lb. child), I thought to myself, "I wish Chad was here." Out of all the people who was going to help put this fire out, I thought I was probably the least qualified. The boys, or mom, usually handled crises in the pasture, not me. I tried to stay out of it. Wasn't it Ritchie that helped birth a calf when dad was gone? Wasn't it mom that buried another calf by herself another time dad was gone? Well, this time, dad was not gone. He was definitely here, definitely the instigator of this bonfire gone awry, and there were no boys in sight. Mom was in India. It was a dang good thing Lindsay was here visiting, so she could watch the children. I wasn't going to be able to stay out of it this time. In fact, I was in the thick of it.

So, I dropped Andrew off at the house and yelled up to Lindsay, who was upstairs playing with Aubrey and Jessica, "will you keep an eye on Andrew please? Dad lit the pasture on fire," and went back out. From my vantage point on the porch I could see dad still stamping away at the fire with both feet. He had to use both by now. The fire's perimeter was larger now. The wind was still gusting. I didn't know what to do.

I thought, "I don't know how to put out fires!"

But then I had an idea. Why don't I fill up two ten gallon buckets of water and take them out there on the wheelbarrow and then use the water to douse the flames???

Well, I lost faith in that idea after running with the wheelbarrow halfway to the bonfire and most of the water from the two buckets had sloshed out along the way from bumping over the muddy ground. But I grabbed what was left in the last bucket and ran the rest of the way to the fire. By this time I could see the same branching out flames in the second fire as well, this one reaching toward the side fence we share with our neighbors to the south. So now we had two out of control fires. I ran to the nearest flames and threw the water, which amounted by now to about 1/4 cup, on them. There was a small, "ssssssss," as the flames went out right on that teeny tiny spot, and then, whoosh! There went the fire in another direction.

I thought, "oh yeah, right, like the water idea's going to work!"

It was about this time that dad yelled to me, the first thing he had said to me since, "it's not spreading." Somehow without communicating we both knew we had to get the fire put out. He yelled, "I NEED A RAKE!!!!!" So I turned tail and ran again full speed back to the front of the pasture to the barn. Needless to say, this experience gave me a whole new perspective on (a spin-off of) an old favorite primary song... "When my father calls me, quickly I'll obey,"...When my dad called out to me that he needed a rake, you better believe I quickly obeyed that directive! I was more than happy to have some guidance as to what I should do! Once inside the barn, I ran and grabbed the first two rakes I could find, as well as two shovels. In retrospect, I have no idea why I grabbed four tools when there were only two of us. Was I expecting dad and I to have an adrenaline surge that allowed us each to use a rake in one hand and a shovel in the other to beat out the fire? Can you imagine??? Was I expecting the Three Nephites? (Probably not, because I'd only grabbed enough for two Nephites). So I ran back to the fire.

At this point I thought, "I really wish I was in better shape!" Because I couldn't keep running. After making two round trips over the 5 or 6 acres at full speed, I was tired! I had to walk for a few seconds, and then run some more, and then walk. I felt bad because I didn't want my lack of speed to cause the pasture to burn down. I also thought how comical it was that initially I had been hesitant to even walk out here with Andrew 15 minutes before because I was worried about snakes.

Somewhere along my run back to the fire, I lost one of the shovels, so I just gave Dad a rake, and then took one for myself.

I didn't know how to put out a fire by using a rake. I remembered from Little House on the Prairie that they beat the fire, pounding a shovel or a heavy blanket on top of it. So I set to work, beating the heck out of the fire moving to the south fence, while Dad raked the heck out of the fire heading toward the back, east fence that he'd been working on from the beginning. I wondered if it was working. For a while I wondered if what we were doing was helping at all. I panicked again, and yelled, "DAD!!!!!" He yelled back, "YOU JUST HAVE TO RAKE IT!!!" So I kept at it, beating that fire for all I was worth. Flaming bits of grass were flying as I lifted the rake over my head again and again, and dirt flew everywhere. (This hazard of beating the fire over my head was probably why my dad had told me just to rake it. But I saw that what I was doing was having an effect, and I couldn't see myself calmly raking at the grass like it was leaves in the fall. No, no, I was in crisis mode, so I was repeatedly throwing the rake over my head, and beating, beating, beating the ground).

I'd never been that close to a moving, live fire. It was a little scary, I'm not gonna lie. But I watched my dad, methodically moving (bad foot notwithstanding) around the edge of the fire, raking and raking, really like he was serenely raking leaves in autumn. And I knew I could do that. So we worked together. We kept at it.

Eventually, we got the upper hand. Probably only about 30 minutes had elapsed since Andrew and I had initially gone out there, but it felt like eons. Dad raked out all his flames about the same time I finished beating the ground around me to death. The fire wasn't moving any more. It wasn't growing. It wasn't out of control. We had done it! Woohoo!

We came together. We looked at each other, covered in sweat and dirt. We reeked of smoke. We hadn't spoken but about three sentences to each other through the whole ordeal, but we hadn't needed to. We both did what needed to be done.

Then Dad broke the silence and said, "well, for about 20 minutes there, I forgot all about the pain in my foot!"

We laughed. I think we were both relieved it was over.


Later on, Dad cleaned up the burn piles on his tractor. As I was coming in, Chad was pulling in to the driveway. He took one look at me, dirty, sweaty and fatigued and asked, "what are you doing???" I said, as nonchalantly as I could, "oh, just putting out a fire in the pasture." As his eyes widened, I said, "you don't want to know!"







These are some pictures I had Lindsay take afterwards. I had to record this. I even put on Andrew's fireman's hat. It was sometime around now that I discovered that I had dirt inside my ears from wielding the rake over my head, and told Lindsay so, hence, the title of this post.

You can't tell but there were two very large areas behind us that were completely black and torched from the fire. In another week, they were grown over with new green grass and you wouldn't even know there had been a fire.

But I know. I'll always know. And I think my dad will too. Fighting a fire in your own backyard is not something you easily forget.