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Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

by: Murry A. Taylor

: Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 634.9618
EAN: 9780156013970
ISBN: 0156013975
Label: Harvest/HBJ Book
Manufacturer: Harvest/HBJ Book
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: June 14, 2001
Publisher: Harvest/HBJ Book
Sales Rank: 96604
Studio: Harvest/HBJ Book



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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Fighting fires since 1965, veteran smokejumper Murry Taylor finally retired from his legendary career after last summer-the worst fire season in more than fifty years. After three decades of parachuting out of planes and battling blazes in the vast, rugged wilderness of Alaska and the West, Taylor recounts in Jumping Fire, with passion and honesty, stories of man versus nature at its most furious and unforgiving. He shares what it's like to hear the deafening roar, to smell the acrid burn, to feel the intense heat, to breathe the thick fumes, and to finally run for your life with exploding flames two hundred feet high and a mile wide licking at your heels. Written with a keen eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, 'Jumping Fire is a tale of love and loss, life and death, and sheer hard work, set in an unforgiving and unforgettable landscape, that's second only to Norman Maclean's classic Young Men and Fire' (Publishers Weekly).

Amazon.com Review:
To most of us, the smokejumping world is as alien as Mars or the deep seabed. Yet for Murry Taylor--as for many other Alaskan smokejumpers--it's not just an annual summer job, it's his heart's blood and life's core. He, with all the smokejumpers, strains yearly to achieve the three-mile qualifying run in the requisite 22.5 minutes or under, his physical pain superceded by the fearsome anxiety that he might not make it, that he might never again do what sounds more like a nightmare than a cherished dream: parachute repeatedly from 3,000 feet out of small planes into searing fires.

Taylor is 50 and has been smokejumping since 1965. Jumping Fire, his first book, focuses on one particularly incendiary summer in 1991, from April 29 to September 24, recording the day-to-day minutiae of an Alaskan smokejumper (including the tale of that summer's doomed love affair) while interspersing the narrative with memories accumulated from his nearly three decades of smokejumping and stories by and about his colorful colleagues.

The writing is vivid and immediate. Taylor clarifies the workings of parachute drogue release handles, Stevens connections, and cut-away clutches, but he doesn't inundate us with alienating terminology. The technical details are explained as they come up in the many scenes and anecdotes that shape the book. There are stories of jumps that ended in strangulation and multiple fractures and jumps that ended more comically, with the hapless jumper planted deep in a puddle of duck excrement, or landing on top of a moose. The guys rib each other mercilessly, perform their preflight gear checks religiously, and come to the assistance of their jump partners with a dedication that is inspiring.

The beauty of Alaska infuses Taylor's narrative. He describes the miraculous shift from winter to summer, with willow trees and red alders budding, massive plates of ice shattering, and the sunset-sunrise specials that last all night with the same care that's devoted to his scenes of blazing trees and scorched hills. By the time he pens the epilogue, dated December 1999, Taylor has become the oldest active smokejumper in the field's 60-year history and is trying to decide whether to sign up for the coming season. Should he choose to finally retire, he could always take up writing full-time. He's a natural. --Stephanie Gold



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars - Give it a miss
A poorly written, testosterone drenched missive about fighting fires in Alaska. The writer fills ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Jumping Fire
Murray creates a beautifully written piece of wild land fire fighting history. With sometimes disturbing ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - What's smokejumping *really* like? Read this book and find out!
Bar none, Murry Taylor's book does the best job I've ever read of capturing the essence of the smokejumper's ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - great book
I bought the book mostly to get some technical details about smokejumper's work and obviously did not expect ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Great Book on Wildland Firefighting!
This is most definitely a must have for anyone in the fire service. Although I have not been a jumper, I do ... Read More

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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.