|
The three biggest regrets in my life are: never hitting a home run in Little League, not
playing professional football, and not becoming a smoke jumper for the U.S. Forest
Service. Because I am too old, 42, to turn back the clock and pursue these fallen dreams,
I am forced instead to make all sorts of excuses for why my life forked away from those
three paths.
Allow me to quickly examine the first two setbacks. I wasn’t all that good in hitting
and fielding in Little League. The one time I hit a long ball into the outfield for a stand-up
triple, I tried to stretch that three-bagger into a home run. I was tagged out at the plate.
Adding injury to insult, I ripped open my left knee on the corner of the plastic home plate.
Playing ball was not my game.
I had better success in football, becoming the star fullback in seventh grade. But I was a
late bloomer, and as my classmates got bigger, tougher, and meaner, I watched in horror as
my reluctant body failed to follow suit. I gave up the dream of playing professional football
around the ninth grade.
The fire within
Which leads me to door number three: becoming a smoke jumper. The summer after graduating
college from the University of Michigan, I was living in Kalispell, Montana, where I found
work as a seasonal firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service in the Flathead National Forest.
For eight weeks, I battled fires in Montana and Idaho with my fellow crewmembers. It
was tough, exhausting, sooty work. We were on our feet all day long with our shovels
and Pulaskis (a combination pick axe and spade), digging fire lines, hosing down “hot
spots,” turning over soil to look for burning tree roots.
I got in great shape that summer—it was an aerobic workout that earned “hazard
pay.” Eighteen-hour workdays were common, and when it was time to go to
sleep—usually in a sleeping bag somewhere near the fire—it was lights-out as soon
as I went horizontal.
But in the pecking order of firefighters, the true all-stars, the MVPs, were the smoke
jumpers—highly trained men and women who were airlifted into the middle of a fire.
Their high-risk job was to build emergency firebreaks within volatile areas of the raging
firestorm. You not only had to qualify for this elite position, but you had to undergo
rigorous training that included daily 10-mile runs.
Daily 10-mile runs. Hearing that sent my mind awhirl. At the time I didn’t know
anyone who even ran 10 miles, let alone 10 miles every day. I was not a runner then.
The longest I had ever run was about a half-mile in gym class. I was as much intrigued by
the idea of becoming a smokejumper as I was by the idea of running 10 miles. These two
activities were curiously entwined as a fantasy.
A running start
After that first season of fighting fires, I became a runner. The transition occurred in
Yosemite. I was living near the campground, biking and hiking, and not really knowing what
to do with my life. My girlfriend had gone back to Ann Arbor to finish her last year at
University of Michigan. When she was never around to receive my phone calls at night, I
grew suspicious. I tempered my anxiety by running. I graduated from one mile, to two miles,
to the magical plateau of five miles.
Weeks later, when I discovered that she was now dating her next door neighbor, I upped
my mileage to 10. I burned off more than calories during these long runs. And, for a
new runner, there is nothing more exhilarating than running a distance that is measured
in mileage with two digits.
Now that I could knock off 10 miles I felt primed and ready to apply to become a smoke
jumper. The year was 1980. The Forest Service turned down my application. I never
found out why, but I assumed it had something to do with my lack of firefighting
experience.
Sadly, I chalked that up as a missed opportunity, and elected to attend graduate school at
Berkeley. My career as a smoke jumper was over before it started. Oh well. Life’s
decisions.
Moving on
Yet, while I attended Berkeley, I started a new sport—swimming. Three times a week,
I’d swim a half-mile in an outdoor pool at the end of the day. I was from the Midwest
and the idea of swimming outside during the winter months was uplifting. And as I spent
more and more time in the pool, another fantasy reared its attractive head. I dreamed
of someday doing the Hawaii Ironman triathlon.
Two years later, I did indeed finish the Hawaii Ironman. Thankfully, I was spared the regret
of having the Ironman bypass me as a road not taken. Perhaps, in some roundabout, disconnected
way, the unfulfilled dream of becoming a smoke jumper materialized in the reality of crossing
the finish line at the Hawaii Ironman.
We might not be able to chase all of our dreams, hopes, and aspirations, yet when we are
successful in our pursuit, the everlasting satisfaction that results is like a fire that
burns within. It is a fire that refuses to be
extinguished.
|
