LOCALadk Magazine

68 Summer 2018 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk "So there I was………and that ain't no shit." This, I quickly learned, was how ever y good smokejumper stor y starts and ends. So there I was, when the quiet of the forest was broken by the tell-tale sound of a hammer smacking a wooden board. The buzz of the saw and the pop of a screw gun meant I was getting closer to the work site. It was August and I was hiking a trail in the Saranac Lake Wild Forest to meet up with a group of volun- teers working to construct a new bridge along one of the trails near Floodwood Pond. I had been con- tacted by one of the volunteers, John Pietras of Saranac Lake. He informed me that he and a group of retired Smokejumpers from as far away as Montana and Washington State were going to be working on the project. He thought our maga- zine might be interested in learning more about this group and their mission. He was right. Smokejumpers are so named be- cause they parachute out of air- planes into forest fire sites to fight the flames. The development of this profession was a slow process. It started in 1918, when aerial fire patrols first became an idea. The Forest Ser vice eventually borrowed a plane and in 1925 conducted aerial patrols in Montana, Ida- ho, and Washington. 1939 saw the first experimental para- chute jump to quickly reach remote fires. The experiment went well and in 1940 the first smokejumper mission was accomplished with five Forest Ser vice personnel and 60 Ea- gle Parachute Company personnel jumping. In 1981, the first woman smokejumper successfully completed training. Today smokejumpers continue to be a national resource, with over 270 working from various Forest Ser vices bases throughout the countr y. They are highly trained, experienced, and pro- vide strong leadership for attacking wildland fires in remote areas. As you might imagine, this kind of work is ver y demanding and team- work is critical. Bonds between jumpers are strong because they need to rely on each other. These bonds and friendships, I learned, last forever. Among the volunteers, Ron from Wisconsin started jumping in 1958; three others in 1968, and John in 1973. Only some of them ever worked together, yet they are all part of a "band of brothers." A few of them were proudly wearing t-shirts and hats that depicted dif- ferent smokejumping groups. I asked what they liked about being smokejumpers and their re- plies, all delivered with huge smiles, were: the adventure, travel, the hard work and reward, and the thrill of parachuting out of airplanes to fight fires. The National Smokejumpers Association (NSA) was start- ed in 1992 and operates as a non-profit organization focused on preser ving the histor y of aerial fire management. NSA is dedicated to preser ving the histor y and lore of smokejump- ing, maintaining and restoring the nation's forest resources, responding to special needs of smokejumpers and their fam- ilies, and advocating for the program's evolution. One of the programs created to accomplish this mission is called TR AMPS, which stands for Trails Restoration and Built To Last By Kathleen Evans

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