send the Nursery from 176, and the rookies have a good time. They race around the fire with a pumper, knock down the flames, and return for a second load of water. They take the second pumper as well; Gilbert reminds them that there is also a small water tank along E-5 from which they can draft. They return that night, serenade the saloon and Skid Row with exuberant beeriness, and the next morning announce ambitious plans for mop-up. They want both pumpers and the water truck. Everything returns empty late that afternoon, and Tom explains that they intend to return the next day for more. “More what?” Dave asks. No one has ever used this much water on a North Rim fire.
The next day we all turn out. The fire is a mess. There is a mediocre scratch line around the perimeter, no evidence of bucking on large logs; there are gouges in the ground where high-pressure hoses streamed through the soil, and puddles of standing water, in one of which a patch of duff still smokes. Disgusted, Dave issues shovels and fedcos, and we break up into two-man teams and section the fire off into blocks. By lunchtime the fire is out. Gilbert plucks a section of saturated duff, squashed and reshaped under a tire, for the FCA Musuem.
RALPH GOES TO BECKER BOG; OR, LIVING WITH THE KANABOWNITS AXLE BUSTER
The mud is like a living ooze, and we are clogged in it.
It is axiomatic that there is no running water on the North Rim, only intermittent streams that appear during the spring melt. All of the ephemeral runoff, however, seems to be channeled into the fireroads. The red pumper is now half submerged in a vat of mud where the Sublime Road veers into a meadow. I have emptied the slip-on and Wil and John Paul have attempted to dig out our right-side wheels. With the winch cable, we uproot a spruce, the only tree in the vicinity; one shovel is now stuck under our right rear tire. There is no other recourse than to radio for help. I tell Joe that our saw has broken and to bring out Big Mac. It is a code phrase that means “I’m-stuck-like-hell-so-get-your-ass-out-here-with-chains-and-a-block-and-tackle.” Never publicly admit that you are stuck.
The mud is entirely seasonal. It is one of three hydrologic categories we recognize: no water, useful water, and mud. “No water” is the norm. It is why we dry-mop fires and pack in fedcos and wrestle with slip-ons and pumpers. “Useful water” is generally found in the Canyon and must be deliberately packed or pumped to the Plateau. The Area is sustained by an incredible pump and pipeline operation that taps Roaring Springs some thirty-nine hundred feet below the Rim. “Mud” occurs only seasonally but with devastating effectiveness. The mudholes tend to occur at the same sites each year, probably sustained by quasi-permanent springs and seeps—leaks in the karstified plumbing of the Plateau, an exposé on the inverted hydrology of the Kaibab. As the snowmelt disappears, so will the mud. Once it is gone, even the summer rains cannot restore it.
We learn all this empirically. It is enough to know where and when water and mud can be found. The springs are generally irrelevant, but where the subterranean hydrology bubbles to the surface by a fireroad, there is mud, and mud is always germane. The perennial sites have been named: the Elephant Trap, the Black Hole, the Kanabownits Axle Buster, Mogul Hill, the Little Grand Canyon, the Wallow Hollow. For each, too, there are regular procedures for extrication. The same trees, marked by collars of scraped bark, are used for winching; log fulcrums, commemorating previous disasters, decorate the berm like cairns along a trail; caches of rocks and branches flash an alert along roads, like river eddies that warn of submerged snags. But Wil and I have discovered a new site, and we will have to work out a new procedure. We sit to eat an early lunch and wait for Joe.
The crew mills around the fireline, waiting for the extra water to arrive. Though the forest brightens rapidly, the evening chill is slow to lift. There are wisps of fog in the Glades. A few sprouts of grass, tentative and thin, poke through old, dirty layers of pine needles.
There are misgivings about conducting a spring burn. The last spring fire flashed across an upper crust of duff like a flame through gasoline, fatally scorching even large trees, then expired suddenly without much total fuel consumption. The large fuels and the deeper duff are still too wet to burn. But the plans have been approved, the fireline and a large portable folding tank are in place, and when the water arrives, we will lay down a hose system within the line to protect the fire perimeter. The extra water, it is felt, should allow us to quell any unwanted flare-ups. But the water never arrives. Jonathan and the dump, with the old water tank attached to it like a turtle’s shell, reach only the junction of E-6 and E-6A before he radios for someone to bring him the Big Mac and an extra chain.
The junction is located within a shallow draw, where E-6A doubles back on itself. The site is dense with young fir—curiously rank within an otherwise open ponderosa forest. One rear wheel of the dump has found a mudhole. The dump cannot move, there is nothing on hand that can pull it out, and the first hope of extrication is to lighten the load. That Jonathan and Rich attempt, using the Mark III. Water sloshes rapidly out of the tank and onto the hillsides, only to slide over the surface back into the hole. More moisture will enter the hole by seepage. A mud bog has become a mud moor. The mud now captures a second rear tire, and the skewed truck blocks the entire road.
We prepare a detour for our pumpers and report the incident to maintenance, which greets the news with its usual scowl. Yes, we agree, we will pay overtime for someone to get the dump. It takes several hours for the front-end loader to reach the scene, trailed most of the way by a covey of curious Winnebagos. At first Dane attempts to pull the dump out directly with heavy chains. Then he tries to dig out the rear wheels with the loader, to lift the rear of the dump out of the hole. The loader’s tires spin; there is movement, a thrill of hope; then the thrust of the loader depresses its own wheels down through the surface crust. The dump has not been lifted; the loader has been sunk. Wildly Dane tries to free the loader, but each attempt only buries it more deeply. Water and mud ooze over its axles. The loader coughs to an ignominious death. It will take two weeks until the ground can dry sufficiently to liberate the vehicles. In the meantime, we so improve the detour that everyone agrees the temporary road is superior to the old one.
The prescribed fire is postponed indefinitely.
We open the roads in a traditional sequence—some for their importance, some for convenience, and always relative to the mud condition. The Walhalla roads are usually the first to dry out. Despite some notorious swamps, W-1 is usually drier sooner than Sublime with its lengthy traverse of high meadows. For access to Swamp Point and the Saddle Mountain Turnaround we simply rely on Forest Service roads. E-1 is almost always opened last. When maintenance brags that it can handle the Elephant Trap, the R&T crew promptly sticks a road grader in the bog, then watches helplessly as a dump truck, filled with gravel, sinks up to its axles. The Sublime Road is closed for weeks.
Joe and Henry Goldtooth show up in the white powerwagon; they have paused at the store to pick up some candy bars and Cokes. We will be at the site all afternoon. After an hour of futile labor it is apparent that we will not return by 1700. We debate whether to leave the truck until tomorrow or stay with the project. Overhead the sun bears down; mosquitoes germinate spontaneously out of the ooze; the mud, like brown tar, washes over the axle; the doors can no longer be opened. We pause for a break, chew on candy bars and tins of crackers, and debate strategy.
Wil and Joe recall episodes from previous seasons. Nearly all the worst mirings have been the result of administrative decrees that—conditions be damned—such and such a road would be opened by such and such a date. When Captain Zero, North Rim manager, demands that W-1 be cleared within a day so that visitors can travel to Point Sublime, we protest and are told to remember our place. Our place, apparently, is in the mud. On Crystal Ridge we stick all three vehicles within the space of thirty yards on a road that resembles a slow stream of chocolate pudding. We work individually—each crew to its vehicle—for an hour, then realize that our only hope is to treat the problem collectively. We scratch out drainage ditches to carry water off the road, dig out wheels, stuff rocks and logs into the enveloping ooze, cut small green trees
