Life with Fire

Triss Seemiller is a trans woman who started gender-affirming hormone therapy when she was on a shot crew in California. She transitioned soon after she left the crew. She has occasionally felt uneasy about sharing her identity with coworkers since transitioning, and in this episodes walks us through her breadth of experiences on different crews to talk about situations where she felt most empowered and comfortable being herself, as well as the situations that made her question her desire to stick with fire as a career. Through it all, she provides some incredible perspective on what it's like to navigate modern fire culture as a trans woman, and offers some suggestions for folks who want to build a more inclusive culture on their own crews and districts. 

This episode is sponsored by #ForestProud—a community of land stewards focused on keeping forests as forests while fighting for forest climate solutions in the era of climate change. They serve to "connect the dots" between organizations, initiatives, those interested in joining the forest sector and those already involved. To check out some of their great content, follow them on Instagram and Twitter at @forestproud. To become a member, learn more about them or donate, check out their website: https://forestproud.org/. 

Bobbie Scopa has had quite a long and storied fire career—she recently retired after 45 years working in both wildland and municipal fire, during which she worked her way into the Chief position and into numerous leadership positions over her career with the Forest Service. Notably, she was present on the Dude Fire in 1990, where six firefighters were tragically killed, and even served at Ground Zero after 9/11.

But Bobbie's story doesn't start and end with firefighting. She's also a trans woman, and has experienced the fire world as both a man and woman, having transitioned to female between fire seasons in the late 1980s. This gives Bobbie an exceedingly rare perspective on gender dynamics on the fireline—perspectives that she now shares widely through her podcast, Bobbie on Fire, as well as her new book, Both Sides of the Fireline, which is available for pre-order and will be released this fall. Through it all, Bobbie maintains an incredible ability to tell stories that serve not only as valuable lessons learned, but often as funny and relatable anecdotes for anyone who has worked in fire—and especially for those who are underrepresented in the fire space. 

To hear more of Bobbie's stories, check out her podcast and website. 

To pre-order Bobbie's book, find it on Barnes and Noble  or through our host's favorite local bookstore, Village Books in Fairhaven, WA. 

For more information on our newest sponsor, #ForestProud, check out their website. 

To support Life with Fire, check out our Patreon. 

In the second half of our conversation with Jane Park, we spoke about some of the diversity initiatives that Jane has spearheaded within Banff National Park and Parks Canada as a whole. We also spoke about Jane's experiences of working in fire as a Korean-Canadian woman and type 1 incident commander, and why she thinks it's imperative to bring more people of color and women into the wildfire and prescribed fire spaces. Be sure to check out our first episode with Jane, which covers prescribed fire and fire management in Banff National Park! 

Mystery Ranch's new women's-specific fire packs: https://www.mysteryranch.com/Packs/Fire/New

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

In our second episode of the Women in Wildfire series, we brought on Banff National Park Fire and Vegetation Management Specialist Jane Park, who on top of being a profound presence in the wildfire and prescribed fire management space is also, quite simply, really frickin cool (and very fun to chat with). Jane is a Korean-Canadian woman and a type one incident commander; she has also played a huge role in building more diversity within the Canada Parks system, and has notable on-the-ground achievements in bringing more progressive fire management to Banff National Park. We broke this conversation up in to two parts, with the first focusing on fire ecology/regimes in and around Banff, as well as some of the prescribed fire initiatives Jane has led in the park (and a whole lot more).

Stay tuned for the second half of our conversation with Jane, which will be published later next week. 

We also want to give a big shout out to our new sponsor, Mystery Ranch Backpacks. To browse their seemingly endless catalog of backpacks for any activity you can think of, check out their website: www.mysteryranch.com

To see Mystery Ranch's new women-specific fire packs (!!), check out https://www.mysteryranch.com/Packs/Fire/New.  

To donate to Life with Fire, check out our Patreon—patrons who donate at the $15 level and up will recieve a Mystery Ranch swag pack, while those who donate at $20 and up will get a Life with Fire calendar: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

There's a chance you've seen Nez Perce wildland firefighter and model Celilo Miles in a recent advertisement for Victoria's Secret—in it, she wears Nomex pants and holds her hard hat, emblazoned with the Nez Perce Tribe's fire management program logo. After seeing the ad making the rounds in the wildland fire community, we tracked Celilo down to chat about her background as both a wildland firefighter and a model and how her appearance in the VS advertisement came about. She spoke about balancing modeling and fire, and what each vocation has taught her about the other. We also spoke about the dynamic of being a woman in fire, during which she provided some suggestions for other woman who are interested in fire or are just getting started.

This episode is the first in our series on women in wildfire, which will run until early May. 

Celilo in Vogue Magazine: https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/victorias-secret-love-cloud-launch-celilo-miles-interview

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Life with Fire website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Life with Fire email: [email protected]

The Mt. Adams Resource Stewards in Washington State is an excellent example of a hyper-local solution to community fire resilience. Started in 2004 by this week's guest, Jay McLaughlin, the organization now boasts a community forest, a 10-person stewardship crew, community development programs and fire adaptation resources for nearby communities.
Jay has a deep pool of experience in engaging rural (often former logging) communities in fire resilience and more progressive land management; in today's episode, we speak about the challenges of an organization like this, but also the myriad ways this work has been immensely rewarding for Jay and others in the community. He also offers some suggestions and bits of advice for others who hope to develop similar organizations in their own communities.

More information on the Mt. Adams Resource Stewards: https://mtadamsstewards.org/

Deer Humans Podcast Link: https://player.fm/series/deer-humans

Life with Fire website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfirepod

Time stamps:

5:48 — Mt. Adams Resource Stewards background/creation; fuels program development

8:56 — Working forest creation and introduction of stewardship crew

15:00 — Is this type of organization scalable across other Western communities?

17:35 — Earning buy-in from resource-dependent communities; outreach insights in rural communities, hearing out detractors

20:14 — Original inspiration for starting the organization

22:09 — Funding sources.

24:20 — Building connections in resource-dependent areas

25:41 — Suggestions for other organizers interested in creating a community forest

In the second half of their conversation, Michael Wara and Amanda briefly dive into the nitty gritty of liability regimes as they relate to both wildland and prescribed fires, how smoke will continue to impact communities across the West and finally, how the current suppression workforce structure is not a practical means of moving into a more fire-adapted future.
Of course, a suppression workforce will always be important, but Michael considers the abysmal work-life balance of the current wildland fire suppression structure and how that contributes to low retention of skilled employees. Eventually this brings him to consider how women are pushed out of the suppression/operational fire world by way of wanting a family or children, and how this has long-standing implications for the sustainability of the workforce and its objectives.

Life with Fire Patreon: www.patreon.com/lifewithfire

Life with Fire Website: www.lifewithfirepodcast.com

Notes:

3:15—Wildfire liability/responsibility regimes

8:45—Air quality impacts on communities

12:30—Prescribed fire liabilities, California's "claims fund"

21:55—Sustainability of suppression workforce; retention and having a family; the engrained misogyny of wildland firefighter work-life balance

23:30—Could community fire stewards be the future of sustainable employment in the wildfire/prescribed fire spaces?

26:55—The desperate need to build a bigger, skilled workforce to meet our management objectives

President Biden recently rolled out a plan to treat 50 million acres of land with fire over the next 10 years. The question is—is 50 million acres actually realistic with the system we have in place right now? We spoke with environmental law and policy expert Michael Wara about the logistics of actually putting that much fire on the ground to reduce risk in vulnerable communities, how we may not be in a place to scale it to that level yet, and what we can do to get to the necessary level of fuels reduction and fire resilience. We also talked a bit about Michael's job as the Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford, and what he and his students are doing in the environmental and wildland fire spaces to help fire practitioners and build fire resilience into law and policy. This is our episode one of two with Michael, with the next publishing in two weeks.

Timestamps:
7:55 — Wildfire risk to utilities.
15:30 — Biden's plan to burn 50 million acres in 10 years.
21:35 — Limitations of Forest Service resources in achieving those acreage goals.
26:00 — Thinking radically about the future of fire policy.

We covered such a broad range of subjects with guest Phil Higuera in this episode that it was hard to nail down a title. Nonetheless, Phil's expansive research background lended well to a conversation that covered paleoecology, how lake sediment is used to determine events that happened 13,000 years ago, how forests are changing with a warming climate and how we humans can choose to respond to those changes. Our main objective with the conversation was to discuss Phil's research in Western Washington's San Juan Islands (host Amanda's backyard) while getting his Master's degree at the University of Washington; the work he did there is part of a limited pool of research on fire history in Western Washington, and we wanted to see if Phil might have some perspective on the risk of a large, high-severity conflagration in this area, particularly with the 2020 Labor Day Fires as a pertinent reminder of what can happen in these ecosystems.

As always, we appreciate you listening and sharing and engaging with Life with Fire. If you'd like to support us financially you can do so in a variety of ways on our website's "Donate" page: www.lifewithfirepod.com/donate.