Afternoon all.
Currently 68 and sunny, headed for low 80s and possible t storms.
Been spending a lot of time out in the woods of late, though not fighting fires. Pretending to fight fires, just not the real deal.
Definitely don’t get hazard pay for that. Spent one whole day up in the town of Coffee Creek showing the crew of a fill-in engine around the area. They’re from Oregon and just filling in until our forest decides to staff our engine that normally lives there. Anyway, it was ten hours of driving back roads in a fire engine, so could be worse.
Yesterday and today are my regularly scheduled days off, and I took the opportunity to hike up to my favorite mountain lake with the dog. It’s a special hike, as my best friend and I used to do it every year in May or June (whenever the snow melted), and this was the first time I’ve been able to do it since he died in 2021. Weather was perfect, and in a poetic twist of fate, the snow on the back side of the mountain was too deep to get all the way to the lake, just like so many times when I’d go with him.
Del, try to avoid those helicopter rides. They’re less fun in a gurney.
—TK