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Jul 14, 2023Liked by Joshua Doležal

Fabulous--brilliant writing which invites the reader into a vividly-particular place and time that most of us could only imagine distantly otherwise. At the same time, this essay conveys powerfully the poignant, bittersweet ambiguity of being human in a complex situation where what it means to "do the right thing" is murky at best. Especially in this season of summer days suffused with the smoke of far-off Canadian wildfires, I think that this piece will haunt me as the original experience obviously still haunts the writer.

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Thank you, Stephen! I remember your encouragement on some truly awful undergraduate attempts at fiction. Craft truly is a lifelong apprenticeship.

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It’s quite atmospheric!

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Many thanks!

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My uncle was a smokejumper after his time in Army Airborne which followed after his years at Oregon State in forestry. He became a high climber for Weyerhauser and then later logged in Borneo and Fiji before returning to the Flathead Lake region to start an elk farm.

Your account rings so true to me

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Thank you, Gordon. I didn't realize folks were elk farming in Montana (that seems wrong somehow -- I thought it was mainly Midwesterners who did that!). I grew up hunting elk in the high country along the Clark Fork River and in the Yaak Valley. It was a nice surprise to discover that there is an elk lottery in Pennsylvania, too.

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Gorgeous, Josh. The details, the evocative visuals, the sensory material. And the tension leading up to getting to the fire. Lovely. Clearing trails in the mountains at 14/15 in Ojai, in the later 1990s, my best friend Jason and I--the smallest ones--were called and answered to Nutsack and Foreskin 😩😂😂. Yes. Really.

My favorite line: “I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from.” Not because it’s crude but because it’s such a crude male thing to say and it felt highly believable.

Michael Mohr

‘Sincere American Writing’

https://michaelmohr.substack.com/

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Thanks, Michael. It is a pity that many of the best jokes I know were acquired on night shift during my firefighting days and are not fit for polite company. Jones taught me many.

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