Writing While In A Trance

Last night during mail call, I received five pieces of mail; two were birthday cards, two were letters, and one was the Gamblers Anonymous monthly bulletin for August. The birthday cards were from my mother and father respectively, and the two letters were from dear friends. I can’t say enough about how much mail I receive each day, and I am so grateful. All the letters were wonderful. Normally, I leave my letter writing for the weekends, but last night, I sat outside at the “table” and wrote three letters. I sat at the table with one of my friends from the “table” who was also writing a letter. I set out to write only one letter but got into a writing trance and wrote all three letters. My friend, who was sitting across from me, even made a comment regarding how fast I write. Yes, I do write quickly, which is one of the reasons why my penmanship is terrible. The other reason is that I seem to go onto this trance, and the words flow out of me. There were times when I didn’t know what the next word would be, but somehow, someway the words do come out of me in some semblance of order. Last night, this is exactly what happened as I stayed at the table for 1-1/2 hours writing these letters. As first, I was a bit reluctant (my terrible downfall of procrastination reared its ugly head), but when I started going, I was on a roll.

After writing, I went to my room where I read a little before falling asleep. Rarely, do I stay up later than 10:00 p.m., and last night I fell asleep a few minutes before. My sleeping pattern was the usual, and I did get in my Tuesday exercise routine. Prior to my starting my exercise, I have been asked to wake up two of my fellow inmates. One of these I have a standing order (in a positive sense) to wake them up, and yesterday, the worker wakeup was due to a malfunctioning alarm clock. Yes, these guys can depend on my because it is the rare occasion I oversleep, not because I am dependable but because I seem to always be awake.

Today was yet another lay-in day, but my crew was on call all day. This meant we didn’t have to go out to the grade. We did have to be ready to respond to a fire call. I took advantage of the lay-in by having a double workout day. Not only did I work out during the early morning, I worked out in the midmorning. I did my usual Tuesday burpee/pushup exercise, and later this morning, I did 84 minutes on the Harvard Wall. The morning passed quickly enough since I again assisted with the cleaning of the bathrooms. It does get a bit difficult to clean the bathrooms with three crews in camp, so today was a maintaining day. This did allow me the time to add the extra workout this morning.

The day was cruising along, and as I as writing the blog, the fire alarm went off. Yes, my crew was needed on a fire call at a place near where we were working on the chipping/cutting project in Idyllwild. From the moment I hear we were headed to Idyllwild, I was concerned. This area is densely populated with very tall trees and other vegetation. Also, this are has not burned in a very long time. Couple all these factors with the lack of rain over the past 1-1/2 years, and there is a scary fire situation. The captain who took us on the fire call is incredibly calm, and I really enjoy his style of leadership. The job must get done, but his mild-mannered leadership style makes working with him very easy. He did put my mind at ease as we entered the bus because there wasn’t any rush in his voice, and I knew we were in good hands.

We arrived on the scene to a real life wildfire. The area was burning quite well, and the tall trees were crackling with the fire. Once again, the captain led us calmly into the burn area, and our assignment was to ensure the fire was contained. Unlike the past fires I have been on, this fire was actually burning, and airplanes along with helicopters were making water and fire-retardant drops from above. I was in awe of the fire and how it seemed to be spreading from tree to tree. I was more in awe of how the California Department of Forestry and Fire Service rallied to contain the fire. There were many airplanes in the sky along with the helicopters constantly doing the water and retardant drops while it was still daylight. Meanwhile, as I worked, I stayed aware of my surroundings at all times because several of the tall trees were burning very well. The key is to remain safe at all times, and not once did I feel I was in a dangerous situation. There was a line around the fire when my crew arrived, and the fire never moved beyond this line.

Since we arrived late in the afternoon, it was going to be an all night affair. As the sun was setting, the airplanes were doing their drops. These airplanes are very close to where my crew was working, and several times I thought we were going to get dropped on, but the first few tries weren’t even that close to us. The next few tries did, in fact, douse me and the rest of the crew with the fire retardant. It was actually quite funny because the fire retardant is a pink color and is also quite sticky. I got some on my back and helmet which seeped into my hair. Some of my fellow crew members did get more of the retardant on them, and they were soaked through and through. The retardant washes off quite easily, and no one was injured. It was quite comical to see most of the crew covered with the pink liquid. After the direct hit of the retardant, we cleaned one another off, and since it was now getting dark, we were able to have dinner.

There was no way we were leaving the fire line until the next morning, so our food consisted of meals ready to eat, or MRE. I have not eaten my MRE to date for various reasons, but tonight my choice was to either go hungry or eat the MRE. I chose to eat the MRE which, to my surprise, was quite tasty. It is a full-course dinner, and mine was vegetarian. No, I didn’t order this. It just worked out this way. Inside the pouch were crackers, peanut butter, dried cranberries, pound cake, and spicy pasta penne. I ate the crackers and the spicy pasta penne. Also in the pouch was a pouch which could be used to heat the spicy pasta penne. This was a remarkable device because all I had to do was place the pouch of the spicy pasta penne into the heating pouch and add a small amount of water. There was a heating device at the bottom of the pouch, and in one minute, the pasta was warmed. I was quite impressed by the heating device and the taste of the pasta. Of course, I didn’t want to read the ingredients of the pasta because the list longer than the first five chapters of “War and Peace”! The purpose of the MRE is to supply the user with calories, which equal energy. When I first saw the MRE’s when I started three months ago, I was very hesitant, but now I am certainly impressed with them.

Dinner was over, and now we were tasked to watch the fire all night long. The crew spread out along the fire line and a safe distance away from the many burning tall trees. I did find a safe spot and watched a 60-foot tree burn all night long, and as it burned, it came down in sections. As it crashed down in these sections, it made a tremendous thudding sound. There were big trees and staying away from them was the idea. I did watch in amazement as the fire burned mostly in the trees. Another tall tree looked as if it was glowing as the fire reflected off its branches in the darkness. The fire strangely was very peaceful at this point, and up in the sky, there were thousands of stars. We did take turns staying awake, and I did manage a few hours of sleep. Yes, I slept on the ground with my jacket as a blanket since the temperature was in the low 50’s. Not only did the temperature drop, we were at 7,000 feet above sea level, and at one point during the evening, the relative humidity was 2%. The lowest relative humidity I have ever encountered prior to this was 5% when I lived in Las Vegas. Yes, it was very dry last night, and thankfully, the winds stayed down during the night. The fire was still burning, but it wasn’t spreading in the area where I was.