Outdoor writing runner-up: Flaming Out

“Go, go, go!” yelled my dad.

A wall of orange and yellow fire four feet high was spreading farther across the trail with each second. He was right; we had to hurry.

“Faster!” I yelled.

Dad sprinted through the flames with our dog. Mom ran through right behind him, and my brother ran through behind her. It was my turn. The flames had spread farther across the trail by now. This is gonna be hot, I thought to myself as I dashed toward the fire. Then I jumped.

This was my family’s first backpacking trip.

Mom grew up at Moose Creek, the ranger station in the middle of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, because my grandfather was the ranger there. It is a 1,347,644-acre wilderness on the Idaho-Montana border. When my brother and I were little, mom would tell us stories about her adventures:

“What do you boys want to hear tonight?”

“The cinnamon roll story!”

“Okay. Your grandma used to make the most delicious cinnamon rolls. They were warm and gooey. One day at Moose Creek, me, your Aunt Kathy, and Uncle Martin were jumping off the porch over one of these cinnamon rolls. After a while, your grandma came out on the porch and saw what we were doing, and she yelled, ‘Kids, get away from that rattlesnake right now!’ See, the rattlesnake had been curled up and it looked just like a cinnamon roll!”

“Hahaha a cinnamon roll!” my brother and I would laugh.

We loved those stories. We used to hike a lot when I was smaller, but it had not happened in years, so I began to pester them this year about a backpacking trip. Eventually my parents decided to backpack into Moose Creek, so that we could see the place where all the stories occurred.

We started at Selway Falls, Idaho, and the plan was to hike 25 miles into Moose Creek along the Selway River. After we saw Moose Creek, we would hike out the same way.

The first day, we began walking in the late afternoon and hiked about two miles. We set up camp on a small sliver of a beach. The next day we made it seven miles. At our campsite that night, I swam a bit, set up my tent, and sat around.

Sitting made me notice something. The sounds outside were farther away than those at home and more peaceful. Instead of a TV blaring, a river was soothingly bubbling by. Instead of a mother loudly talking, a bird was chirping off in the distance. Instead of a brother complaining, a tree was rustling in the breeze. I did not have to tune these sounds out; I soaked them in.

We reached a creek called Three Links a little while after we started hiking the next day. Smokejumpers were setting up sprinklers there to protect the bridges from fire. They said the trail ahead would be fine. They were wrong.

We began to see smoke a mile from Three Links. The landscape morphed into a charred black husk of what it had been just a mile back. Nothing green was spared from the fire. Fallen trees blocked the trail every 50 feet.

Small fires appeared. After a while the trail descended the side of a cliff. We could hear trees falling onto the ground behind us: Boom! Boom! Boom! The trail had slid out in a few places, leaving 4-foot gaps.

We were extremely tired. We had to hope the fire zone would end soon. After making it down the cliffside, the area was still burned, but green spots were appearing. We even crossed a running creek with live vegetation surrounding it. We were getting optimistic. Then we saw the wall of fire threatening to completely cross the trail. We took off at a run.

I jumped past the biting flames. The heat was scalding. It felt like an entire day of getting sunburned compressed into a single moment. Luckily, I did not catch on fire.

The land was once again lush and verdant. We continued ahead a quarter of a mile and made camp at the smallest usable beach on the Selway River. As soon as we arrived, we all jumped into the river and cooled down. When we exited, we took stock of the injuries. Dad had heat exhaustion, and I looked like a chimney sweep from the ash, but we humans were fine. Midnight, the dog, was not. His paws were burned from walking on the ash. He had also developed a bad limp and could hardly walk.

We could still see smoke rising into the air behind us, so we made a plan to swim across the river if it reached us during the night. Then we went to sleep.

Still alive the next morning, we hiked all the way to Moose Creek by about 11 a.m. We did not think our dog could hike any farther.

Fortunately, Moose Creek has a backcountry airstrip, and we talked to the volunteer host there and found a plane to fly us out that day. It was a small blue and white Cessna. A three-day hiking trip was flown in 20 minutes.

An embarrassing text message can seem life-ruining in the moment, but it is nothing when compared to real, life-threatening danger. I would definitely go on this trip again, not only because it makes a good story, but because it gave me a wider perspective on life.