The first time he received a phone call about a smokejumping job we were in a Korean restaurant in Tucson and he stepped out of the establishment to take the call.  When he walked back in, he looked extremely serious, sat down at our table for two, and calmly broke the news that he had been invited to rookie training at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base — a dream come true for him.  He had spoken of jumping since our initial meeting in New Zealand when I was 18 and he was 21 so I’m sure you can imagine the span of life that had led up to this moment for us!  My reaction was to stomp my boots on the tiled floor, smack my palms down on the table top and emit a howl of joy.  In the kitchen, I heard some poor cook drop a stack of dishes in surprise to my rather vociferous response!  I was thrilled for Robert, thrilled for us, thrilled to the point of goosebumps like I get when we have a dream become a reality.

Since then, we’ve spent six years straddling the states of Washington and Idaho, moving twice a year to chase the fire season and returning to Idaho for the winter months — some of those summer seasons I spent alone in Idaho when housing in Washington didn’t shake out and those were very lonesome times for us.

All the moving has been too much for me and if I can be completely frank, I didn’t think I had another season in me, at least I didn’t think I could move the studio to Washington again this summer.

It’s one thing to move a home and a family but another thing entirely to pick up a studio space and small business twice a year and shuttle it 16 driving hours down the road, set it up again and find your way back to the work like a drunken homing pigeon.

So when Rob called me from Arkansas in early March to tell me he had been offered a position at the McCall Idaho smokejumper base, my reaction was very similar to that first smokejumping phone call he received six years ago.  I stomped my boots on the floor of the strawbale house, slapped a palm down on the kitchen island and screamed aloud.

I WAS THRILLED.  I was beyond thrilled, really.  And I would like to mention (brag) that Rob’s transfer to McCall is a lateral transfer into a permanent position which everyone thinks is easy to do, but it’s really not easy to do.  To take a permanent transfer, a base has to be very sure of the quality of person they are hiring.  Once they take that person on, they won’t be able to get rid of them (because that’s how the system works).  So with that said, I must offer huge thanks to McCall for taking a chance on my man.  They won’t be sorry.

My life has been crazy for so many years now and we have worked hard to make do with less than ideal circumstances every single fire season.  There has been the yearly added stress of finding last minute housing or studio space in the Methow Valley which is really totally impossible (think housing crisis due to two consecutive years of the valley, quite literally, burning down).  In that moment, when he told me he said yes to the job, I had a sense of STABILITY wash over me.  Peace.  I said a prayer of gratitude, I lived a prayer of gratitude for days, with all of my heart, feeling almost blissed out by the reality of our lives, and I felt my roots thrust themselves downwards, past the volcanic rock of the Snake River Plain, into the hot core of this state we love.

We are thrilled to be back in the beautiful state of Idaho, full-time.  We are delighted to really move forward, full steam, with seeking out and purchasing our working ranch property.  We are looking forward to meeting a new branch of fire community in McCall.  I’m so happy to no longer be seasonally moving my studio.

In the meanwhile, we’re sorting out life plans for the summer, working out some kinks in the still-unfinished Airstream which we will be living in again, trying to figure out how to get my ’71 Ford down from Winthrop and all the other details that come with a new job and relocation.  It’s all a glorious pain in the arse!  And I don’t even care!

With all that said, here’s to you, Robbie!  You’re the best man I know — the man, the legend.  I love you.  I am proud of you.  Let’s keep on grabbing life by the horns.
[Another typical family portrait for us…milliseconds later, I found myself literally log rolling down this cliff face…thanks for that, babe.]