Smokejumper: A Memoir by One of America's Most Select Airborne Firefighters - Softcover

Ramos, Jason A.; Smith, Julian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062319639 ISBN 13: 9780062319630

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2016

Synopsis

A Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association bestseller

"A fascinating look" (Esquire) inside the world of smokejumpers, the airborne firefighters who parachute into the most remote and rugged areas of the United States, confronting the growing threat of nature’s blazes.

Forest and wildland fires are growing larger, more numerous, and deadlier every year — record drought conditions, decades of forestry mismanagement, and the increasing encroachment of residential housing into the wilderness have combined to create a powder keg that threatens millions of acres and thousands of lives every year. One select group of men and women are part of America's front-line defense: smokejumpers. The smokejumper program operates through both the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Though they are tremendously skilled and only highly experienced and able wildland firefighters are accepted into the training program, being a smokejumper remains an art that can only be learned on the job. Forest fires often behave in unpredictable ways: spreading almost instantaneously, shooting downhill behind a stiff tailwind, or even flowing like a liquid. In this extraordinarily rare memoir by an active-duty jumper, Jason Ramos takes readers into his exhilarating and dangerous world, explores smokejumping’s remarkable history, and explains why their services are more essential than ever before.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Bestseller

In a firestorm, nothing is safe: sand turns to glass, metal runs like water, wood and human beings vanish into ash.

Enter a world of breathtaking danger and beauty: In this remarkable memoir, veteran smokejumper Jason Ramos offers a rare inside look at the lives of airborne firefighters, the select few who parachute into the most rugged and remote wild areas to battle nature’s blazes. Featuring a foreword by author John Maclean (Fire on the Mountain), Ramos’s unforgettable firsthand account takes readers into his exhilarating and daring world.

About the Author:

Jason A. Ramos has devoted twenty-six years of his life to the fire service. His career began at the age of 17 as a volunteer with the Riverside County Fire Department, then progressed to wildland firefighting in Southern California. Now a smokejumper in his sixteenth season, he is based in Winthrop, WA, at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base, the "birthplace of smokejumping."

JULIAN SMITH received a Banff Mountain Book Award and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure. The coauthor of Smokejumper: A Memoir by One of America's Most Select Airborne Firefighters, he has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, Wired, Outside, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Julian lives in Portland, Oregon.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062319639
• ISBN 13: 9780062319630
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272