It’s been awhile since I posted anything, even longer since I posted regularly. Recently, my wife met someone from another local Hotshot Crew who knows who I am and was asking when I’d write again. I thought I had done an excellent job of keeping this blog anonymous, but oh well; it was actually pretty cool to hear that someone had read my blog and appreciated it. (Fireman Mover: Cheers!)

My last post was about a year ago, talking about being ready to move on from crew life, being too damn old for this shit, and the difficulty of moving up without being able to accept a job on a different forest or region. (Being married with kids living in a desirable location makes it difficult to relocate, FYI. (I’m not resentful or regretful, just stating a fact that a lot of us FS folks here have to deal with one way or another.)

Anyway, turns out I got lucky and got an unexpected promotion on my forest, with a different crew. So I’m a foreman now. Moving to a different crew in a leadership position has been challenging, interesting, and a great source of content for the blog.

I’ll be posting more about the transition throughout the 2021 fire season. (Delicately, now that I know I’m not anonymous!) But for the record, everything I’ve experienced since accepting the job has been beneficial; a chance for personal development, if sometimes uncomfortable.

It’s fascinating to me that two equally awesome Hotshot Crews can have such different approaches to doing the same job with the same end state. Picking those approaches apart and trying to possibly blend the best of both moving forward will be an interesting and hopefully rewarding process.

That is all.