Initiation

Our boots crunch on the icy ground as we approach the blaze. I pull my mask the rest of the way on, check the seal, and turn the knob that starts the air flowing. We’re at the door of the burning mobile home, hose charged and our adrenaline surging, ready for the Incident Commander’s word to attack.

On entry, the three of us are greeted with smoke so dense we cannot see past the glass of our masks. Vision is useless. Hearing is nearly so, with the noise of a burning building, breathing apparatus, and the muffling effect of our masks and protective gear. The only reliable guide is feeling – the direct contact of our gloved hands on each other’s backs, the hose line that joins us one to another, and the kinesthetic sense of our position relative to each other and to the center of the Earth.

We feel our way in, testing each step, searching for the seat of the fire. With the disorientation in space, time seems to slow down. I am barely five steps in, when my left foot goes through the floor, plunging my leg through carpet, plywood, insulation and God only knows what else, leaving me with my right leg bent under me and my left stuck in the floor up to mid-thigh. My buddy behind feels me drop and thinking I’ve tripped, tries to steady me. When he feels that I’m not getting back up, he starts yelling through his mask to find out what’s wrong.

I’m yelling “Hole! Hole!” but he can barely hear me. I try to extricate my leg. I can move the leg that’s in the floor, but my boot is threatening to come off with any upward pull. Fire has weakened the floor, and may still lurk beneath us. I’m afraid to lose the protection of the boot but to take extra time trying to get my leg out with boot intact puts us all at further risk.

Ahead, the Captain has realized that her two rookies aren’t following and are doing an awful lot of yelling. My buddy has realized that I’m not simply kneeling on the floor, I’m in it, and pulls me out by my SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) straps, despite that fact that now I’m yelling, “Boot! Boot!”

“To hell with your boot!” he yells.

Our Captain takes all the noise and the tension on the hose as a signal to come back. She steps right into the hole, the hose and nozzle entangle her leg, and she, too, is stuck. Other firefighters go in and pull the Captain out. Finally, the mobile is cleared and the crews transition to defensive attack. No injuries are found and everyone but me gets back to work. I rummage through the truck trying to find something to put on my cold, bootless foot. I appropriate someone’s extra socks and puddle jump around the engine for the next few hours helping the engineer and changing out air bottles.

My first structure fire was a textbook case of what you’re not supposed to do in commanding a fire. The three of us should never have been sent into a mobile home that had burned to that point. And, despite early indicators that there may have been arson involved, the way the fire was managed destroyed any evidence that would have allowed an investigator to determine the fire’s cause and origin.

That one incident shaped the whole rest of my time in the Fire Service. It taught me how much I, and those around me, did not know. It motivated me to pursue a degree in Fire Science, to become a trainer, a safety officer, a fire investigator, and, ultimately, an incident commander. And, I remain as grateful today as I was that freezing winter morning I sat on the running board of Engine One, with one boot on, the other lost somewhere in smoking wreckage, and not a single blister on my skin.

I’ve heard it said that there are no atheists in foxholes. I’m not qualified to speak on foxholes, but I can say that in my years as a firefighter and EMT, I rarely met a fellow emergency services worker that hadn’t spent considerable time coming to personal terms with life and death or had not engaged in some search for larger meaning. Some turn to organized religion and find solace there, some are less traditional, and some take comfort in more earthly ways. All are faced with the fragility of human life – their own and others’ – on a daily basis.

I have taken the less traditional path. I’ve found the same lessons in the “Cloud of Unknowing” I faced in that burning mobile home as I did years before as a postulant in a religious order, the first place I encountered the 14th century mystical text by the same name. I didn’t become a nun, dedicating my life to silent prayer and contemplation. I became a firefighter and an EMT, battling in the mud and blood of howling emergency. That was far less difficult for me, given my temperament, than chastity, poverty and obedience ever would have been. (Obedience was difficult for me? It was an utter impossibility. That’s a topic for another post.)

And yet, I’ve found that the lessons on the Path still find me, in their own way, at their own time. I’ve reached a place where the form matters much less to me than the substance. I don’t ask “What religion are you?” or “What do you believe?” or “By what name do you call ‘the Mystery’?” Instead, I ask “Does your practice enable you to face life with faith and courage?” “Does it make you a kinder, more compassionate person?” “Does Life sing to you?” and “Do you sing back?”