FIRES is taking a break

You will not be charged during my hiatus

Hello FIRES friends,

I hope you’re all well and taking care of yourselves as fire season ramps up. I’ve been meaning to post many times about the Southwest fire season, the terrible injuries (and one death) in Nebraska, and the shortage of Wildland Firefighters (yes, FIREFIGHTERS) due to low pay and minimal protections and benefits.

The thing is, I woke up four weeks ago and couldn’t walk without excruciating, level 10 pain. For a while I didn’t know what was going on. I went to the emergency room and they couldn’t figure it out either. Finally, after my lower left leg had gone almost completely numb and lost about half its strength, I got an MRI, which showed a massive disc herniation. I won’t go into details. It’s…ugly. And I have no idea how it happened or how long it has been happening.

I saw a neurosurgeon yesterday, one who’s known for being conservative with prescribing surgery. He explained the MRI to me and said that I am at risk of losing nerve function and being permanently disabled unless I get into surgery ASAP. He scheduled my surgery for Monday.

Luckily, the surgery itself is very routine— a double laminectomy. (I had to google laminectomy twice). I have been in an immense amount of pain for nearly four weeks, and have been living with pain for the past year and a half that may be due to this issue. While I will be unable to bend and twist for three weeks, I’ll be able to walk normally, for longer than five minutes and without a cane. I haven’t been able to do any of those things for a month, so this is a huge relief.

While I’m nervous about a (sudden, unexpected) surgery, I have a lot of hope that this could lead to a huge improvement in my quality of life.

In addition to that, I am also working on my book (about all the subjects I engage with here) and the next draft is due to my editor on June 20th. This, along with a new freelance contract with The Nature Conservancy (yay!), means my time will be crunched for the next couple months, and my energy will be limited.

I absolutely don’t want to charge you as paying subscribers when I don’t know how consistently I’ll be able to send you quality content. So, I am pausing paid subscriptions.

I hope I can be back and writing this newsletter consistently by July. I’ll let you know before I unpause paid subscriptions.

I am SO GRATEFUL for everyone who subscribes to and engages with this little newsletter and I hope all of you, especially those of you working out in the field, are staying safe out there.

I want to recommend The Hotshot Wakeup, which I’ve recently subscribed to. It’s a great way to keep up with what’s happening and has tons of information. I am not sure who writes it but they’re former hotshot overhead and they’re doing a great job. They also have a podcast.

Calf Canyon Fire Destroys 166 Homes.

I also highly recommend Amanda Monthei’s LIFE WITH FIRE podcast.

Lastly, I am going to drop my mealtrain link here. Please, only donate if you have some extra cash to throw around. This is for help with medical expenses— essentially so I don’t go into debt paying my (unexpected) $5,000 deductible for the surgery. Thank god I have health insurance through the marketplace.

Thanks, to all of you, for supporting this newsletter, whether you’re a paid or free subscriber. My hope is that I can create more great content starting in mid-summer. I hope it will be even sooner than that that you’ll see me in your inbox with resources and information about fire.

I’ll leave you with this wonderful video about Indigenous fire activism in Nova Scotia: