Love Big Country

Love Big Country: Tales of Wildfire, Wildlife & Wild Times
by Mark Fletcher
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$29.95 ISBN 9781778690471

At 398 pages, I harboured reservations about reviewing Love Big Country: Tales of Wildfire, Wildlife & Wild Times, a memoir conveyed in storiesby Mark Fletcher. What if it was dull and/or poorly written? Then I began reading, and before I’d turned the first page, I was rapt, as Fletcher—wildland firefighter, smokejumper and adrenalin junkie extraordinaire—not only writes exceptionally well, this natural storyteller’s lifetime of intense experiences could make for blockbuster movies. He was in a helicopter that “flew directly through a residual cottonwood tree” and crashed. He’s shared rivers with grizzlies, was threatened by armed criminals, and, most terrifyingly, experienced burnovers: “fire penetrated the surrounding green fuels in a rush of flying embers, licking flames and loud, thick, wind-driven smoke. Burning trees fell close with muted thuds. The dragon was upon us.”

His “beloved profession … nearly killed [him] a number of times,” and he earned ten concussions in the 1980s. “Parachuting into forest fires and firefighting in general come with risks,” he asserts. “Everyone knows I push boundaries.” But there’s no braggadocio here: the author regularly credits his associates, from heavy equipment operators to birddog pilots.

More than half the book brims with harrowing tales from the front line (the “Wildfire” pieces). “Wildlife” and “Wild Times” sections follow, and each section provides “snapshots of [Fletcher’s] life,” which, he explains “has been about healthy relationships” with the “natural environment, with the wildlife that shares our planet” and with myriad people. What shines through: Fletcher was masterful at the career that brought him much joy, but work aside, he also comes across as an empath, an environmentalist, a feminist, and just an all-round nice guy.

A “Huck Finn-type” from the get-go, Fletcher’s career began in 1975, and in 1993 he became a certified air attack officer with the BC Forest Service, Wildland Fire. His entertaining anecdotes are filled with the language of the trade, ie: smokejumping, saw kits, ditty bags, snags, birddog flying, jumpspotting; a reverence for natural landscapes; stories about various characters and Fletcher’s three beloved “fire dogs”. Sid, a heeler, had “an international fan club” and once, after joining his owner on a “carnival ride” of an air tanker flight in the Kootenays, the author later found the dog on his hotel bed in Castlegar. Sid had laid on the channel changer and turned on the TV—he was watching The Littlest Hobo.

Aside from “literally brushing embers off” and meeting the likes of David Suzuki, John Denver, Buddhist monks (whose incense sticks and cones ignited a mammoth old growth cedar), Mexican firefighters (“Frying tortillas on hot spots with fixin’s was a tasty shared meal”), and using sign language to communicate with a Gwich’in-speaking woman who required ATV evacuation, there are wolf, wolverine, cougar, beaver, alligator and lynx stories. The most touching concerns Fletcher’s connection to a great horned owl at his southeast Saskatchewan farmstead, and the “owl medicine” she shared.

May this absolute firestorm of a book receive the readers and recognition it rightly deserves.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM