Les Joslin

 Although my old “fire prevention guard” job title has been superseded by such titles as “fire prevention technician” or “fire prevention specialist” in ensuing decades, I think my approach to the job as I did it on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s—my philosophy regarding how to do the job—remains valid.

I don’t know that any fire prevention guard ever prevented a fire just by riding around in his or her agency vehicle. I know I didn’t because I didn’t. The key to fire prevention patrol success is public contact, and the key to public contact is to get out of the patrol rig and talk with people.

So, instead of just driving through campgrounds and raising dust, I routinely parked my vehicle and walked the campgrounds. That made me available to visitors, either to initiate conversations or to respond to questions. Outside developed campgrounds, I parked a respectful distance from and walked into camps to greet campers, answer questions, and work a fire prevention message and a campfire permit check into the conversation.  I did the same along heavily-fished streams or wherever else I encountered forest visitors.

Another way I made myself available to the public was by patronizing resort restaurants along my patrol routes. This cost me more than packing a lunch, but it was a rare noon hour at the Crags Resort or  Mono Village restaurants in the Twin Lakes area or at the Virginia Lakes Resort restaurant that I didn’t make at least a few good contacts. I even lunched in sheep camps with hospitable Basque sheepherders a few times.

Availability’s partner in the public contact business is visibility, and I made it a point to look the part, to be easily recognized as a Forest Service representative. A good haircut and a clean shave, a freshly-pressed uniform shirt with badge and nametag in place, clean green jeans and solid work boots, all coupled with a pleasant disposition, project a positive image. There is no place in public service, I agreed with the district ranger and the fire control officer, for slovenly appearance and bad manners. I’ve no proof, of course, but I’m convinced this friendly, helpful, face-to-face approach contributed to my success at the job.

Availability and visibility were enhanced by other patrol route chores. Chief among these was sign installation and maintenance. I often left the ranger station on patrols with new road signs or fire prevention signs to be installed lashed to the rig. In addition to the tank-pump unit and fire tools, there were digging tools, paint brushes, and a five-gallon can of brown stain to help keep all district signs looking fresh. Since signs were almost always along roads or at trailheads, I was available and visible and made valuable public contacts while installing and maintaining them. This approach, I’m convinced, made a positive impression.

And, early on, I learned that—while my primary job was fire prevention—I was expected to know just about anything anyone might want to know about the Toiyabe National Forest and the surrounding country. I made it my job to be a fast learner! And what I knew I supplemented by reference to national forest maps I carried and provided—free of charge in those days—to the public. Assistance to visitors in emergencies, it goes without saying, also was part of the job.

I often wondered just how I was doing at the job. It didn’t seem enough to be told I was doing a good job. I had questions that wouldn’t answer, questions I had to answer for myself. Was my approach to each situation a good one? Did each face-to-face encounter reflect the right mix of diplomacy, empathy, and helpfulness? Was my image one of fairness and competence? Just what kind of impression did I leave with the public? It seemed I was in a position to make good friends or bad enemies for the Forest Service on a daily basis.

Did I worry too much about such things? No, I decided, I didn’t. My job was more than preventing and suppressing forest fires. It was also to win friends for and understanding of the Forest Service and its endeavors. The way I did my job helped mold public opinion of the organization in which I had always wanted to serve.

That’s why I had to be careful. It’s all too easy for someone whose job involves daily contact with a variety of publics—in my case, a wide range of national forest visitors and users—to forget these things, to become indifferent toward or even disdainful of the publics he or she serves. Worse yet, I knew, would be to ape the “badge-heavy” cop or act a “big shot” around these publics.

After all, these visitors and users are the citizen-owners of the National Forest System. It’s “national forest land” that belongs to the people of the United States and is administered for them by the Forest Service, not “Forest Service land.” A small point? A nit-pick? Not at all! It’s an all-important distinction that informs—or should inform—the perceptions of both the public servants and the publics they serve of their respective roles, responsibilities, and prerogatives regarding the national forests and each other.

Although most of the people I met were middle-class California suburbanites, visitors to the Toiyabe National Forest came from all parts of the nation and the world. All deserved the best and friendliest service I could provide. I learned then, and believe still, that pubic service means just that.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

The deer hunting season that last month of my Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard career didn’t end with the opening weekend rush. It went on through most of October, and so did my fire prevention patrols.

Contacts with the hunters were usually, but not always, pleasant.

One day, not long after opening weekend when Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell and I were patrolling together in Buckeye Canyon, we encountered a particularly drunk and obnoxious bunch. They had a particularly large, roaring campfire, and we stopped to do our duty. We did, but not without a barrage of foul-mouthed comments about “cops,” which Marion explained we were not. Halfway through this encounter, I began thinking seriously about the fact they were armed and we were not.

Just a few minutes later, in a nearby camp, Marion and I roused from a drunken stupor a hunter whose campfire was about to ignite the tent in which he was snoring the day away.

Trouble that hunting season came on four feet as well as two. One day, as I patrolled the Buckeye Road, I came upon a campfire burning in an apparently unoccupied camp. I stopped the patrol truck and got out to investigate. The campfire was attended only by a large German shepherd chained to a pickup bumper. I couldn’t locate anyone, so I started to put out the fire.

That got the dog’s attention. He growled.

But he was chained, so I ignored him. I shouldn’t have. Suddenly, the barking beast ran toward me. “How long is that chain, anyway?” I asked myself. But it was too late, and the chain was too long. Fangs barred, the charging dog leaped at me. As it did, I twisted to one side and kicked at it even as I tried an all-too-slow exit. We both made contact. I kicked the dog in the rib cage, and it sunk a couple teeth into my upper arm before I got out of range.

As the dog strained at the chain, barking and growling, I retreated to my truck. I took off my uniform shirt, and was surprised to see how little I was hurt. The wound was no more than a couple small punctures and some superficial scratches. Not much blood flowed. I quickly applied some disinfectant and a couple bandages, slipped back into my shirt, and set about writing the dog’s owner a citation for abandoning his campfire.

Just as I got to the point I needed the fellow’s name and address, he showed up. “What’s goin’ on?” I heard barkin’.”

“You left your campfire unattended,” I informed him. Then, somewhat sheepishly, I added “And your dog bit me.”

“I just went up the creek a ways,” he offered in weak defense.

“And your dog was watching your fire?” I commented before asking him his name and address. I handed him the citation, and advised him I would contact the authorities in Glendale, where he lived, about quarantining his dog to make sure it didn’t have rabies. When I got back to the ranger station, I did just that.

I also paid a visit to Doctor Nichols in town.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Al Hayes, the Toiyabe National Forest administrative officer, validated many deer during the opening weekend of the 1966 deer hunting season.

My last few Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention patrol weeks coincided with California’s 1966 mule deer hunting season and provided my first experience with deer hunters. In previous years, I had returned to college before the hunters had arrived. But this year, having graduated from college, I was serving a full six-month appointment. So the opening weekend of that hunting season was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea so many people came so far to hunt.

            As the motels in Bridgeport and the campgrounds and other camping spots all over the district filled with hunters and their rigs, I began to appreciate the magnitude of the fire prevention job ahead. And, as the opening day of hunting season approached, the Bridgeport Ranger Station was mobbed by hunters wanting campfire permits—that was a good sign, I figured—and information.

Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell had planned for that onslaught. As he flew the district in a helicopter, he vectored me, District Ranger Lynn Mitchell, and a couple other district personnel assigned to patrol duties toward fire prevention “hot spots” on the ground. And, on the ground, in addition to preventing fires, we did the usual duties of Forest Service patrolmen during hunting season including, along with California Department of Fish and Game officers and Mono County Sheriff’s Office deputies, validating the tags successful hunters were required to attach to their kills.

Forest Supervisor Ed Maw detailed members of this Reno office staff to help district personnel during this opening weekend patrol effort. Mr. Al Hayes, the Toiyabe National Forest administrative officer, was assigned to patrol with me.

“Les, I’m just an S.O. paper pusher,” he joked as we left the ranger station on opening day. Then he got serious. “You’re the expert here. You know the country and the job. Just let me know how I can help you.”

I did. And he helped. By the end of opening weekend, Mr. Hayes and I had contacted what seemed like hundreds of hunters with fire prevention messages, validated dozens of tags, and put out more than a few abandoned campfires. I’m pretty sure we prevented some wildfires

But the deer hunting season didn’t end with the end of the opening weekend rush. It went on through the end of October, and so did my fire prevention patrols.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Bridgeport Ranger District Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell welcomed Smokey Bear to the Bridgeport Ranger Station on July 4, 1964. (Note: The 1960s-1970s era U.S. Forest Service shoulder insignia did not arrive in this corner of the Intermountain Region until 1966.)

As fire prevention guard on the Bridgeport Ranger District, Toiyabe National Forest, from 1963 through 1966, I continued the district’s practice of having Smokey Bear appear in Bridgeport’s famous Fourth of July parade. This small town of less than 400, nestled in a verdant valley of the same name at the foot of the eastern Sierra Nevada 85 miles south of Carson City, Nevada, and 85 miles north of Bishop, California, is county seat of Mono County, California, and a popular outdoor recreation center.

One of the larger guys on the fire crew or trail crew was cajoled into wearing the Smokey costume shipped our way from the regional office in Ogden, Utah, for this annual walk or ride down Main Street—U.S. Highway 395—lined by hundreds of local residents and summer visitors.

Smokey sometimes rode on a float accompanied by ranger station kids. On this occasion, as coordinated with the local 4-H Club and led by two of its members, he marched and waved to the parade’s appreciative onlookers.

After the parade, a properly-escorted Smokey always mingled with the crowd in town and then visited with kids in the Toiyabe National Forest’s large Twin Lakes area campgrounds.

The Robinson Creek Fire, on June 29, 1964, burned 350 acres on Sawmill Ridge.

I was returning to the Bridgeport Ranger Station from an early morning patrol of the Green Creek and Virginia Lakes areas when I detected what became the largest wildfire the Bridgeport Ranger District would experience during my five Toiyabe National Forest fire seasons.

It was June 29, 1964, and having just passed through Bridgeport I was northbound on U.S. Highway 395 when, across Bridgeport Valley to the southwest, I first saw it. Sheep trailing on Timber Harvest Road? Or smoke? Smoke! Wispy white smoke!

Three miles to the ranger station, and maybe eight or ten to the smoke. I tried to raise the station on the radio as I pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The truck responded, but the station didn’t. A glance at my watch told me why. It was lunch time, and with the fire danger rated moderate the office wasn’t staffed. This was years before fire control officer Marion Hysell had a Forest Service radio crackling in his ranger station house day and night.

Two miles to the ranger station. I could have switched to channel two, raised the Toiyabe National Forest dispatcher in Reno, explained the situation, and asked him to telephone the FCO’s house. But I decided I could get there, tell him myself, pick up some help, and be on my way to the still wispy-but-thickening column of smoke before I’d half finish telling the dispatcher my story.

Two minutes later, I came to a dusty halt in front of the FCO’s house and passed the word. Then, with Don, the only crewman not out on project work, I headed up the Buckeye Road toward the fire. After alerting Ranger Hoag, who decided to man the office until the district clerk returned from lunch, the FCO loaded his Jeep with fire tools. As he wheeled toward the fire via Bridgeport and the Twin Lakes road, he confirmed my sighting to Ranger Hoag over the radio. Ranger Hoag alerted the supervisor’s office and the dispatcher, and ordered air tankers.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the station—probably twenty or so after I first saw the smoke—Don and I were speeding down Timber Harvest Road toward a blaze that, at about a mile’s distance, I estimated at ten to fifteen acres and spreading fast through cheatgrass and sagebrush toward the Jeffrey pine-clad slopes of Sawmill Ridge. Through the smoke, on the far side of the fire, a few people could be seen making vain attempts to stop it.

In what was a futile—and probably foolhardy—attempt to head off the fire before it could reach the timber, I left the road and, within a minute or two, Don and I were attacking flames running upslope along a two-hundred-yard to three-hundred-yard front. But two guys with a couple hundred gallons of water and hand tools, it rapidly became obvious, were no match for a fast-moving fire of that size.

About the time I recognized that truth, and also realized that my poor headwork was getting Don and me into more than a little trouble, I saw the FCO’s Jeep jounce over the sagebrush and halt some distance off. “Fall back! Let’s get this rig outta here!” he ordered as he ran our way. So, as I reeled in the hose, Marion maneuvered the patrol truck toward safety. Within a few minutes, the two vehicles and the three of us were back on Timber Harvest Road, and the scene of our “initial attack” was engulfed in flames.

Ranger Hoag’s pickup crossed the bridge over Robinson Creek and he joined us on the road as the fire, now all of an hour old, raced into the timber. Taking charge, he requested a spot weather forecast from Reno and, with the FCO, planned for the reinforcements starting our way.

Since little, if anything, could be done about the head of the fire—then moving rapidly upslope, torching and spotting in the timber—two rag-tag crews of mostly pick-up firefighters were deployed along its flanks to prevent it from spotting and spreading into the nearby resort and campground. From my smoke-choked vantage point with the Timber Harvest Road crew, the fire seemed to be living up to the expectations of the spot weather forecast. Superheated pines exploded. Deer, fleeing the flames, ignored me as they bounded across the road.

Just after two o’clock, an old ex-Navy TBM from Carson City made the first air drop of 600 gallons of bentonite slurry on the head of the fire. If this slowed its advance at all, it didn’t for long. It did boost our morale.

So did arrival of the first substantial reinforcements. Before the fire was two years old, fifty U.S. Marines from the Mountain Warfare Training Center at Pickle Meadows on the Sonora Pass road and sixty State of California inmates of the Inyo-Mono Conservation Crew near Bishop led by California Division of Forestry overhead were on the firelines. By three o’clock, over a hundred Marines were on the fire, and additional pick-up firefighters had been hired. And by four o’clock, when the air tanker’s scout plane had reported the size of the fire to Fire Boss Hoag at about 250 acres, fire control personnel from the West Walker, Alpine, and Carson ranger districts had begun to arrive. A project fire overhead team left Reno about five o’clock, and overhead also began traveling to Bridgeport from the Central Nevada and Las Vegas districts of the forest.

By late afternoon, the situation looked like the project fire it had become. The fire was divided into four sectors, with Marion Hysell as sector boss over Forest Service crew bosses, Marine Corps line workers, and three bulldozers on the “hot” up-hill end of the fire. A PBY and two TBMs made a second series of drops on the head of the fire. Much to my disappointment, I was assigned to set up the fire camp to receive firefighters and equipment as they arrived. By nightfall, the camp and the night shift had been organized. I was eventually relieved as camp boss and told to rest up for a day shift job.

I’ve spent more comfortable nights than that one in a paper sleeping bag out in the sagebrush. While I slept, the major battle of the campaign was fought at the top of Sawmill Ridge.

The plan was to take advantage of the cooling effects of the night air, which would slow the fire down, and stop it with a wide fireline at the top of the ridge. With seven cats and 76 men on this hot sector, Marion was building that line across the ridge from north to south. At eleven o’clock, he tied in with the southern sector’s line to contain the fire. But, two hours later, the wind shifted from the west to blow from the southeast and, as firefighters retreated for air and safety, the fire jumped the line. Another line was started to corral the blowup.

I awoke at first light to a transformed fire camp and landscape. The camp’s population had doubled, at least, and there seemed to be plenty of fresh firefighters for the day shift. A mobile fire weather forecasting unit, complete with spinning anemometer and other instruments, had arrived and was in business. Best of all, a field kitchen was serving breakfast. Dirty, cold, and sore, I ate.

I was assigned to the northern sector as a crew boss, and given a Marine Corps platoon as a crew. The platoon’s sergeant, probably figuring this young Forest Service fellow akin to a second lieutenant, suggested I work the crew-platoon through him. I readily agreed. I held a brief fire school to explain what we were going to do, how to use the tools, and safety before starting up the line. About the only problem I had, as we built fireline toward the ridgetop, was keeping them from bunching up—from working too close to each other for safety.

Fire Boss Hoag declared the fire controlled at noon, just 24 hours after it started. But there was still plenty of mop-up work left.

Late in the afternoon, my Marines and I were relieved by a Forest Service crew from Idaho, and at the end of the day shift I was released to resume fire prevention patrol duties the next morning.

There were plenty of questions to answer during that July first patrol of the Twin Lakes area. Thousands of campers and residents had watched the fire consume 350 acres of brush and timber between Robinson Creek and the top of Sawmill ridge, and everyone wanted to talk about it. I, of course, capitalized on their interest by pushing my fire prevention message. The fire that had so impressed them, we knew, had been man-caused. A couple little boys, the investigation determined, had built a “campfire” in the brush.

Although the fire camp was removed that evening and firefighters from other districts and forests were returned to their stations, mop-up continued for several days.

The smoke of the Robinson Creek Fire had barely cleared when, on July 9, Forest Supervisor Ivan Sack and Frank Dunning, his fire staff officer, conducted the district’s previously-scheduled fire preparedness and readiness inspection. Although we were still mopping up the big one, they told Ranger Hoag and Marion they were pleased with what they saw—including, much to my relief, my fire prevention program. But it seemed to me I was doing everything a fire prevention guard should do well—except preventing big fires.

On the evening of July 21, as I was completing a Twin Lakes patrol, I sighted and extinguished the last smoke. It was a smoldering stump about a third of the way up the ridge. The Robinson Creek Fire was officially out. But, in a way, it would never be out for me. As I crunched my way down the charred slope, it seemed this greatest defeat of my fire prevention career would burn forever in my memory.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol,

the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers

 on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

One of the Toiyabe National Forest’s larger fires of my fire prevention guard era was ignited by a discarded cigarette around noon on June 27, 1966. This blaze, on the Carson Ranger District about a dozen miles south of Reno, quickly blew up and crossed the Nevada state highway which led to the Slide Mountain Ski Area and Lake Tahoe. All traffic on this busy road was stopped. Significant resources—residences, a ski area, a beautifully-timbered watershed—were threatened.

A new Forest Service tractor-lowboy rig, transporting a bulldozer for fireline construction, was trapped on the highway by the fire it was to help control. The truck driver and cat skinner escaped, but the rig and cat were destroyed. The Toiyabe had a real project fire on its hands.

Fire Boss Blaine Cornell sized up the situation. A spot weather forecast called for strong down-canyon winds and low humidity through the afternoon. He planned to stop the fire’s rapid eastward spread toward homes and ranches first, then control its mountainous northern and western flanks. Manpower and equipment were ordered for a four-sector fire, and that’s where I came in.

When the forest supervisor’s office requested two qualified crew bosses for the night shift from the Bridgeport Ranger District, range conservationist Ken Genz and I were dispatched to the fire. It was dark by the time we first saw the fire—a hellish orange glow along a two-mile front atop a ridge off to the West—from the Washoe Valley. The Galena Creek Fire would be the biggest I had ever fought. We turned off U.S. 395 and made our way to the fire camp.

Ken and I arrived just in time for night shift assignments and too late to eat. We gulped black coffee during a quick briefing around a map board. By then, the fire’s eastward run had been stopped by a backfire. The night shift would build a three-mile line around its northern and western flanks. Two line locators were needed, and we were them. Our job was to lead cats up both flanks to head the fire off during the cool night hours. Crews with hand tools would follow our cats at a safe distance, improving the lines that would link up along the top of the ridge and corral the fire by morning. Except for the cats Ken and I would be leading, we’d be on our own.

After the usual delays inherent in working with heavy equipment, I was leading my cat up the fire’s northern flank.

The night was dark, but the fire on my left provided so much light I didn’t need the headlamp on my hardhat. Trees continued to torch but, as expected, the fire was now advancing more slowly. I soon had the hang of nighttime line locating, and worked the cat as close to the fire as I could while avoiding heavy timber that would slow it down. I put all I knew—and all the cat skinner knew—about firefighting into the job, and we made steady progress along the fire’s flank as the night wore on.

As far as I know, I made only one mistake that night. But it was a big one, and I came close to paying dearly for violating a cardinal rule. Carelessly allowing myself to get downslope of the cat, I suddenly gained a whole new perspective on boulders. I survived.

Just after dawn, Ken and I tied our cat lines together. If not yet controlled, the Galena Creek Fire was contained. The sector boss arrived as I enjoyed the views of Lake Tahoe and Washoe Lake. Fresh crews were on their way up the mountain to relieve the night shift, and we were to return to the fire camp. Food and rest at last! Well, almost. First we had to get there.

Wanting to see the rest of the fire, I opted to walk off the mountain along Ken’s cat line. The effects of the fire’s rapid and erratic spread were obvious. While most of the area inside the line was blackened, some small islands of timber had been bypassed and were as green as ever. By the time I hit the state highway, which I would follow for about three miles to the fire camp, the sun had chased the chill from the morning air. I met fresh crews on their way to the western flank.

After a while, I came upon the remains of the trapped tractor-lowboy and cat rig. A nice new outfit only a day before, it was all blistered metal and burned rubber. I walked on through yesterday’s cool, green forest—now a charred and smoldering wasteland.

About that time, at ten o’clock in the morning, the Galena Creek Fire was declared controlled at just over 1,200 acres. Two homes had burned.

After night shift assignments, during which the previous night’s initial attack line locater was that night’s mop-up squad boss, Ken and I were released and returned to Bridgeport.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writers memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

“Most of my few horseback patrols went well.”

I spent a few days each summer in the Hoover Wilderness where increasing back-country travel was increasing the risk of human-caused fires. Most of my wilderness patrols were on foot, but on rare occasions I rode a horse. In 1965, for example, I rode the rugged and scenic Green Creek drainage on a mountain-wise black mare named Coaly, talking with occasional wilderness travelers as I passed Green Lake, Nutter Lake, Gilman Lake, and the Hoover Lakes en route Summit Lake on the Toiyabe National Forest-Yosemite National Park border.

Most of my few horseback patrols went well, but I darn near wound up finishing one of them on foot.

That was the time Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell and I rode up to a little lake above Barney Lake and below Hunewill Peak to rebuild rock fireplaces and erect a sign. After finishing the work and eating lunch, we began the return trip on the two big black horses hired from the Mono Village pack station for the day’s work. About half way down to the junction with the Barney Lake trail, Marion and I met a group of hikers. They were bound for the little lake we had just left, and we dismounted to talk with them. About what, I can’t remember. What I can remember is my mount suddenly deciding to quit the country. He reared, yanked the loosely-held reins from my hands, and launched himself down the trail toward the pack station more than four miles away.

“Now you’re a hiker, too!” one of the hikers observed with thinly veiled satisfaction.

Instead of explaining my preference for shank’s mare, I excused myself with something like “Darned if I’ll walk back to Mono Village!” and lit out after the horse.

“He’ll never catch it,” one of the hikers predicted.

But there was a chance. I recalled the series of switchbacks in the trail up this steep slope, and hoped they’d work in my favor. I plunged off the trail and downslope over boulders and through thickets to head off the fugitive mount.

The first time I tumbled back onto the trail I was just too late. Down the trail to my right, the horse was hightailing into the next switchback. Back into the woods I plunged, again careering downhill as aspen branches slapped my face and mountain mahogany slowed my progress.

Within moments I was back on the trail, and this time ahead of the game. Off to my right, the horse had just turned out of the switchback and was thundering toward me, eyes wild and ears back in what looked a lot like determination. I was determined, too, and as the big black tried to evade me I grabbed its reins just below the bit, yanked down hard, and wrestled it to a kicking, snorting, dusty stop. Its reigns tight in my grasp, the horse followed me back up the trail. Would catching this runaway redeem me in Marion’s eyes? In the eyes of the hikers?

By the time I had led the recaptured mount back up the trail, to where Marion and the hikers were waiting to see if I would walk or ride home, I had managed to brush off dust and leaves and tuck in my shirt. I had also reviewed and rejected every alibi east of the Sierra. The truth of what had happened was obvious. Marion grinned. He seemed satisfied at the fact I had caught the horse. The hikers seemed impressed by the same fact.

Wishing the hikers well, we mounted up to resume our ride back to the pack station.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Forest Service dumps are for refuse disposal, not target shooting.

 Some of the challenges of my Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard job had nothing at all to do with wildfire prevention. Some had to do with the fact I was often the only public servant around to handle an emergency—with that sometimes gray area between assigned duty and moral obligation on what might be termed a “now or never” basis.

Once, on my way to the busy Twin Lakes recreation area, I detoured to check the Forest Service dump I’d burned a few days before. Suddenly, I heard gunshots, just as the Lone Ranger and Tonto once did at the beginning of almost every episode. What I saw as I arrived at the dump scared me.

A big, beefy, fortyish man, standing next to a late model Cadillac sedan, was firing a high-powered rifle—not at me, but at a row of cans and bottles on an earthen berm at the opposite end of the dump. He didn’t, I quickly decided, know what lay beyond the low ridge toward which he was firing and over which his bullets could fly. And he apparently didn’t know that Mono County didn’t allow shooting in the area. Somebody had to tell him before it might be too late.

“Good Morning, sir,” I managed as I climbed out of the cab of my patrol rig.

He nodded and smiled.

“What are you shooting?” followed, though his targets were obvious.

“Just plinkin’ at cans and bottles.”

“Sir, do you know what’s over that hill about a mile?” I asked, pointing toward the southeast—the same direction he’d been shooting.

“Just sagebrush, I guess. That’s all I can see from here.”

“No, sir. The Hunewill Guest Ranch is over there. I’d guess bullets from that rifle could reach there from here.”

“Too many dudes around anyway, right?” he smirked, making light of my concern.

Deciding another appeal to common sense wouldn’t hack it, I invoked the law. There was, I told him, a Mono County ordinance that prohibited shooting within the Twin Lakes basin.

“Oh, yeah? Well, we wouldn’t want to do anything illegal, would we? Guess we’ll just go shoot somewhere else.”

And with that he got into his Cadillac and drove away. I was relieved to see him gone. A few minutes later, after my heart stopped pounding, I radioed a report of the incident to the ranger station. I never saw him again, never heard anything about him.

But, most important, nobody had been hurt.

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.