I came across this beautiful quote by Seneca:

There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.

At the start of 2020, a friend tried setting me up with a friend of hers. But then lockdown happened. Maybe things will change in 2021…

The Markup and The New York Times both had stories about Amazon this morning. In 2021, I hope to wean myself off Amazon, but I fear it’ll be a near impossible feat. I live in a rural town, and there are things I can only get on Amazon. But I will try to live simply in 2021.

Writing about social media and anxiety, Emma Warnock-Parkes suggests this tip to improve attention:

Play a music track and practise listening to one instrument at a time, switching between instruments every so often.

I do this and it helps to calm me down all the time.

Ewan McGregor in episode 7 of Long Way Round, after a couple of Russians killed a black bear, skinned it, and took its gallbladder:

It’s a wild animal living in its own habit, and no one’s got any right to shoot it with a gun. It’s disgusting.

Goddamn right. I love this man.

I finally got around to watching the new Mulan movie, and oh my, what a beautifully shot movie it was. Every frame was gorgeous. It was shot by Mandy Walker. I’ll be following her work from now on.

The movie itself was okay. A fun diversion with a very cartoonish antagonist.

Pixar’s Soul was incredible. A great movie to end the craziness that was 2020.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a firefighter, but when I moved to Montana, I was penniless and in debt. I moved to Montana to start over, to reinvent myself, and to grow up. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without that experience. I’m grateful for all of it.

I think the thing I’m most grateful for during my time as a firefighter are all the places and things I got to see.

From beautiful sunsets in very remote parts of Montana.

To helicopters dropping buckets of water mere feet from me and onto blazing fires.

And bison roaming the land.

There’s a yellow pack the veterans make most rookies wear that’s colloquially known as a piss pump. It’s a backpack that’s filled up with about 5-8 gallons of water that’s worn over the regular pack everyone must carry. Connected to it was a long nozzle that, when pumped, sprayed water. The pressure wasn’t great, but it did enough to cool some areas down. Other times we made the rookies carry hoses and fittings and other gear that added extra weight to their pack and thus made the day a bit longer. I was a rookie once, and I went through this. It was fun.

Most of the time we loaded the gear onto the massive dozers that sometimes patrolled the fire with us. They had longer and more powerful hoses and a massive tank full of water. They were also loud and they made quick work of anything in their way. Firefighting didn’t scare me but the thought of driving one of these machines did. It only made sense that the drivers who drove them were crazy.

I guess you have to be a bit crazy to intentionally run toward a fire instead of away from it, though.

When you can’t kiss the black, whether because the fire is on inaccessible terrain or it’s raging too wildly to send firefighters to fight it or for another reason, you do the smart thing and fight the fire with more fire.

More than anything, firefighting is a team sport. On every fire I’ve ever fought, we always had helicopters flying over the fire. The pilot and co-pilot survey the fire and then relay their report to logistics; logistics drafts a plan of attack with the Incident Commander who then radios the plan to the division boss; the division boss then contacts the crew boss with the plan and their orders; the crew boss tells his crew the plan, and finally, the crew executes the plan.

Sometimes the plan means building line on a very calm and unburnt part of the forest. We build line to prepare for the controlled burn later. The purpose of the controlled burn is to cut off any potential fuel source for the yet uncontrolled fire. We dictate the size of the fire at this point, and it’s one of the funnest part of firefighting for me.

Fires are spontaneous and wild. I can only imagine the same feeling I got when I did my first controlled burn was the same one primitive man had when they finally controlled fire in prehistoric times. It’s such a rush.

What I wish modern Americans understood is that controlled burns are one of the best ways to make sure our fire seasons aren’t as bad as they have been. We can control the severity of fire season with controlled burns during the off-season. But the reason we don’t is because controlled burns, just like uncontrolled ones, produce smoke and soot. People, I guess, don’t like smoke and soot. So we don’t fight fires with fire, even though I think it’s one of the smartest things we can do as a species.

But we elected a reality television star for president, so what do I know.