Life with Fire Podcast, Mystery Ranch Backpacks and the American Wildfire Experience (AWE) have joined forces to bring you this episode with Junior Lazaro—a wildland firefighter who received a Backbone Scholarship from AWE to share his experiences of fire through the Mystery Ranch Backbone Series and Life with Fire Podcast. 

Junior is a young wildland firefighter who shared his experiences of working in fire in his third season on a BLM handcrew out of eastern Oregon. In this episode, he spoke to some of his challenges and triumphs in pursuing wildland firefighting, and spoke especially to the role his father had in inspiring him to pursue this job. 

We appreciate both AWE's and Mystery Ranch's commitment to sharing the experiences of those working on the fireline, especially those from communities often underrepresented in content/media around wildland fire. This episode is the first of two that center the operational experiences of folks whose perspectives are not well represented in wildfire media. 

Need a gift for the outdoorsperson in your life? For mountain bikers, day hikers, travelers and festival lovers, I recommend the MR Hip Monkey.  It's almost too spacious—I always end up packing way more in it than I end up needing, but you never know when you're gonna need an extra layer or that second bag of gummy bears. 

For folks who love a good overnight ski trip, I can't recommend the Gallatin Peak 40 Liter pack enough. I've used this pack for everything from hut trips in the winter to traveling through Europe this fall to backpacking to alpine lakes in the summer. For those who don't have a ton of space to have a bag for every activity in their life, the Gallatin Peak checks multiple boxes and is a wonderfully multipurpose pack that can keep your life simple. Who needs four bags when you really just need this one!?