So, I have had some thoughts today that I just need to solidify so they stop bouncing around in my head endlessly. It’s like a hoselay from hell… ongoing, soggy, and at some point, you’ve got to haul it out.
Today is Labor Day.
There is no greater feeling at the end of the day than when you tie in a burn that’s days in the making, finish chunking in line for 9 days on a now notorious ridgeline, or see the buggy after a brutal day of laboring and hiking. This, in itself, is proof that labor brings joy, satisfaction, and accomplishment for the end user.
Labor is defined as: “work, especially hard physical work.”
This is pretty straightforward: If you bust ass all day and do physically hard work, you are a laborer. Most things we take for granted today are a result of people who physically expended themselves for a paycheck, and often, for the greater good. This in itself is proof that labor benefits others.
Hard work is good for the soul; this is an undeniable fact. Whenever you experience a sense of fulfillment from your labor, it’s not like building muscle or completing a task, like putting black on the map with a Sharpie. It’s much different. That’s your universal fuel tank… It takes hardship, sweat, and, of course, the most important ingredient: hard physical work to fill that tank up.
It’s also rough on the body, and the brain that commands this vessel oftentimes does an awful lot of convincing to just stop, or to take a break. Just power hike up a mountain with 30% of your body weight attached to your back, put on long pants, a long sleeve shirt, a hard hat, add a chainsaw or hand tool, a broken hip, and problems at home if you want to hear your brain tell you you’re doing it wrong.
Your brain will try to convince you that you don’t need to labor right now… “It’s ok, just fall out, why continue, it’s not worth it.” But we must forgive the brain, because it’s just trying to conserve its own energy, which your body is so selfishly taking up due to your labor.
One of the best things I was told by one of my peers was, “Everyone is hurting as much as you; it’s not easy for anyone, and everyone thinks this sucks. Yes, this shit’s hard, who told you it would be easy?”
While this is a harsh reality, it is, in turn, the truth.
And that’s the very reason why you keep going. Because we are in this together. There is a goal, a vision, a mission, and a purpose. That is why we labor. That is why the soul feels accomplished when you get to the top of that God forsaken mountain. “We made it.”
But labor does not come without a cost… welcome to Snaptember.
The body slowly breaks down over the months and years. A pesky knee turns into a permanent clicking noise. A hip no longer sits in the socket as well as you sit in a chair. A shoulder that rotates less than the dispatch list on a slow year. A tired mind that wants to get off the labor treadmill but has no more convincing to do because you never listened anyway.
The mind follows the body, and starts to wander off the task at hand. “What's going to happen next year, who’s going to run the crew, what’s the winter going to be like, what about all the shit that’s already happened this year” lingering throughout the tired mind while the exhausted body tries to cut a tree down…
These are all things that the tired mind will focus on instead of trying to keep the meat carcass safe. While they all deserve brain power at some point, the mind needs to stay focused on the task at hand.
So, where can you find the energy to push through and stay positive while laboring? To the place that you and everyone you work with have been filling up all year.
Your universal gas tank.
The soul you so stubbornly provided satisfaction and accomplishment to in this equation is the saving grace. It has reaped the glory, accomplishment, memories, and universal camaraderie, which, in a way, all contribute to the complete soul of a crew, an organization, an agency, and the world as a whole.
You have labored hard to fill that tank up, and it’s there for a reason. It’s what brings everyone together and fuels the collective and the individual to complete the mission, the goal, and the season. It’s filled with fuel that you all created together, which means it’s shared, not just a manifestation of one lived experience while fighting a fire, being away from home, sleeping in the dirt, and conquering Mother Nature’s most glorious and formidable challenges. None of that would be there if it weren’t done together.
It’s unique, yet permeating if allowed to be.
This is the time to call on it, to get you through the hard times of a seemingly never ending season. Don’t let that go to waste…
For once that goes, so goes the laborer.
Happy Labor Day, and thank you.
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I love this. Thank you. We are not here to become couch potatoes. Life is for living!
Thanks for this beautifully written post that captures the sentiment perfectly. Appreciate you and the rest of the wildland firefighting community for everything you do to protect and preserve our public lands.