Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire

Categories: In the News , Movies & Books , Rediscoveries , Outdoors & Nature

I listened to a feature on NPR the other day about Earl Cooley, one of the National Forest Service’s first “smokejumpers” back in 1940.  Cooley and his fellow smokejumpers jumped by parachute out of airplanes to fight raging wildfires.  He died on November 9th in Missoula, Montana, at the age of 98. 

I learned that on August 5, 1949, Earl Cooley was the spotter on the airplane hovering over a wildfire in Mann Gulch, Montana.  Cooley picked the spot for the crew to land, but tragically, a “blowup”—a deadly explosion caused by a rare combination of flame and wind little understood at the time—trapped and killed 12 firefighters.  The fire overran them as they climbed up the gulch trying to escape it. 

Several years ago, I read Norman Maclean’s classic book about the Mann Gulch Fire called Young Men and Fire (1992).  Maclean grew up in Missoula, Montana, working as a logger and for the Forest Service before becoming a college professor and a writer.  He first saw the Mann Gulch fire still burning weeks later, and he was haunted by it for the rest of his life.  Published posthumously after Maclean's death in 1990, Young Men and Fire is his absorbing, detailed account of the fire and what happened on that fateful day.  He is also the author of the highly acclaimed A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories, upon which the movie is based.