Ringing in the New Year at FUSEE's firefighter mindfulness retreat at Tassajara
by Holy Smokes
I come from an older generation of wildland firefighters who had to uphold a can-do attitude for every suppression assignment no matter how dumb, dangerous, destructive, or delusional it was. We had to suck it up and dutifully carry out whatever we were told to do no matter the physical, mental, or emotional toll from those orders. Of course, in the glorious days of my youth I believed I was indestructible, even immortal. Yes, there were some years that it took months to recover my sense of smell and taste after suffering from hideously smoky incidents, but I didn't smoke tobacco and believed that my lungs would recover eventually. Now I feel the diminished lung capacity from all the smoking forests I inhaled. The chronic pain afflicting my knees, ankles, and back are not just the inevitable markers of aging but can also be traced to specific injuries suffered on the firelines. But these ailments I can admit to my friends. After all, they're the sacrifices made by "heroes," right?
It's the inner emotional pain that is harder for me to admit to others and acknowledge to myself. I come from those older generations that associate mental illness--or more accurately, the lack of emotional wellness--with some shame. Those invisible ailments are not the stuff of heroes who are expected to be stoic and suffer in silence.
Scenes around Tassajara Zen Center
It has taken me decades to confront the accumulated impacts on my body, mind, and spirit from my days of warring on wildfire. I went to FUSEE's firefighter mindfulness retreat more out of curiosity than burning desire to confront the demons of the past. Part of me almost felt undeserving because, although I had my share of near-misses in my short career, I could only claim one traumatic incident that has resulted in a recurring nightmare, the kind of nightmare that has you doing a silent scream that wakes you up in a cold sweat. I had mostly recovered from the injuries suffered on the firelines, and they are now lingering aches rather than life-altering disabilities. I know of several former firefighter friends and colleagues who are dealing with much worse: serious pain, grief, trauma resulting in lasting physical or mental disabilities, and I feel they are so much more deserving of healing than me. But apparently, I had enough emotional baggage buried inside my brain that qualified me for one of FUSEE's firefighter mindfulness retreats so off to the famous Tassajara Zen Buddhist monastery I went.
The retreat was packed with group discussion sessions and activities from morning until night. At first, the days crawled by and I felt heavy from the load. Admittedly, I had come to Tassajara with a fair amount of resistance to dealing with past demons or confronting my emotional baggage. But under the patient, empathetic, wise guidance of the facilitators who are all highly skilled psychotherapists as well as Zen masters, I felt safe to be vulnerable through the intense group therapy sessions and fully immersed myself in the mindfulness lessons and meditation exercises. I was very inspired by the courage of other firefighters who were bravely letting go of their own resistance and opening up to each other. The emotional release from these sessions was truly heartening, and my body felt lighter as the days wore on and inner burdens were lifted. Introducing mindfulness breathing brought a whole new enriched experience to the simple acts of walking, eating, or sitting.
Much of the monastery complex was buried by downed trees and fallen limbs and leaves from winter storms that ripped through the narrow mountain canyon the week before. The firefighters opted to skip some morning sessions in order to help buck up logs, pile and burn the massive piles of leaves. Working in the relentless cold rain, it was joyful to provide some service work to the monastery and we employed some mindfulness techniques to the physical labor. The monastery staff was blown away by the ability of the firefighters--nearly all of us strangers to each other coming from the four corners of the country and many points in between--to spontaneously form work crews and coordinate our actions to get an enormous amount of work done. It was a snapshot flash-forward of the possibilities of fire crews receiving and applying mindfulness training on future work assignments.
On New Year's Eve we were privileged to participate in a special Zen ceremony to celebrate the new year. We gathered in silence at the zendo (their temple), sat in a circle in silent meditation, and then each firefighter was tapped on the shoulder to go ring an ancient bell in a precise and prayerful way. We were literally ringing in the new year. It was a moving experience to realize that Zen priests were performing the same ceremony in monasteries and temples all over the world that same evening. It was humbling to think about the amazing people who had come to Tassajara from around the world over the last 50 years and had sat meditating on the same zafu cushions in the same spots in the zendo that we were privileged to use. It was a peaceful thrill to become part of that flow through time and space, mind and spirit.
Participating in the various small-group discussions and large-group exercises alongside other firefighters bravely confronting their own "monsters in their closets" helped give me the courage to face up to and let go of some of my own emotional baggage. I was warned by veterans of other firefighter retreats that many tears would flow, and sure enough, they did. The powers of denial are strong in me, and I had little conscious awareness of the amount of intense grief that was bottled up inside. My grief was coming from the climate crisis and its weather-fueled extreme fire behavior that is imperiling fire crews, killing ancient trees that should be surviving most fires, and causing urban wildfire disasters on a scale and frequency beyond anyone's lived experience. I grieve for the world I will be leaving my children.
But trusting in the encouragement of our mindfulness teachers and their message that grief and love are sisters, it helped open up my heart to acknowledge and feel this grief from bad fires (something I have never done publicly in my exuberant promotion of good fire) and share with others my sadness over specific ancient forest groves I loved that were wipe out by severe wildfires. On the other side of that grief, I feel even more love for the Earth and more determined devotion to continue the work I do in defending the natural world from the depredations of industrial capitalism and its fossil fuel pollution.
I have now gained new skills in mindfulness and meditation techniques that I'm applying to the everyday stresses and challenges of life. I cannot say that a one-week retreat was a complete "life-changing experience," but I do believe I am a changed person from this experience. I'm now consciously on a healing path towards developing more resilience and balance in mind, body, and spirt. My personal challenge is to develop daily practices to "re-Mind" myself of this path through mindfulness breathing and meditation. Somehow I must carve time out of my busy days to take a pause, feel peace and joy through letting go of grief and anxiety, not waste any day to be mindful of moments both good and bad that define this mysterious but wondrous journey of human life.
The challenge ahead is to make the leap from these amazing retreat experiences that are enjoyed by a couple dozen firefighters at a time and expand this into an institutional practice that can benefit the whole wildland fire workforce. How to take the lessons of these retreats to fuel system change in the culture of wildland fire? On our final day of the retreat, that was the pledge that each firefighter offered, to take their newfound skills and insights back home to their crews, to sow the seeds of a new culture of mindfulness in ecological fire management. I look forward to meditating on that vision! Above all, I encourage all wildland firefighters to participate in one of these retreats and/or seek out some kind of mindfulness training and develop meditative practices wherever you can.