November 2, 2020
The West is Burning
My first season as a wildland firefighter By Colin McLaren as told to Steven Boyd Saum Photo by Colin McLaren By October 2020, wildfires in the western U.S. burned an area larger than the state of New Jersey. A story from the front lines. Typically when we’re out on a fire, we work 16 hour days: up before six and finishing with a pretty late dinner — whenever the work is really done. But recently two of the fires we worked overnight, to 9 a.m. the next morning. We were on the Cold Creek Fire in Wenatchee, Washington. We went...