If You Can’t Stand the Heat
Illustrations by Nicole RifkinIt was September 2019, and I’d been slow-roasting in a small Southern Oregon town for a couple of weeks, waiting on a big one. A wildfire. An opportunity. A chance to prove myself useful and, preferably, profitable. This was the pre-coronavirus era, a simpler time.From the South, I had driven out West in hopes of embedding with workers at a “fire camp,” the catchall phrase used to describe the base of operations during any major wildfire.