Man's Privilege

 One of the chief privileges of man 

Is to speak for the Universe.

"Young Men and Fire"

-Norman Maclean

On the back cover of "The Premonition: A Pandemic Story", the oustanding book written by the consistently excellent Michael Lewis, there is a blurb from John Williams of the New York Times Book Review, "I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it."  While I do not know if I would go that far - no disrespect to Mr. Lewis but if the stapler's history cannot be exhaustively recounted in 400 pages or less I for one am waiting for the Netflix limited series - it was the references Lewis made to Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire", his examination into and his investigation of a historical event of which I had never heard - the Mann Gulch Fire in Montana that on August 5, 1949 killed thirteen United States Forest Service firefighters, including twelve of the fifteen members of the Smokejumper crew who had parachuted into Mann Gulch to fight it and did so within an hour of the Smokejumpers' arrival - that prompted me to buy Maclean's book.  

It was nothing short of extraordinary.  Maclean's use of language and his style are extraordinary.  Over the course of reading it, I found myself transformed from a person who thirty days ago not only knew nothing about it but had never heard of it into a person who was moved equally by the story of the thirteen young men (some of whom were teenagers) and the three who survived and lived thereafter with all that they had seen and all that they had experienced on that explosive August afternoon.  

Far back in the impulses to find this story

Is the storyteller's belief that at times 

Life takes on the shape of Art. 

"Young Men and Fire"

-Norman Maclean

It is, indeed, "A haunting work."  It is also very much something worth reading, whether you are a woodsman, as the Smokejumpers were and as Norman Maclean was, or not, as I am not.  Its lessons - and its cautions - are transferable...  

Their crosses are quiet and a long way off, and from this remove

Their influence is quiet and seemingly distant. 

But quietly they are present on every fire-line, even though those

Whose lives they are helping to protect know only the order 

And not the fatality it represents. 

For those who crave immortality by name, clearly this is not enough,

But for many of us it would mean a great deal to know, 

By our dying, we were often to be present in times of catastrophe

Helping to save the living from our deaths. 

"Young Men and Fire"

-Norman Maclean

-AK