We've got a parallel problem here
with fire suppression and fire culture.
We're missing all the different voices and different perspectives.
We're living with this 100-year-old legacy
of absolute fire suppression that was created
by a homogenous group of white dudes
and didn't take into account any indigenous wisdom or experience
of living with fire on the landscape.
And then we've got this fire culture that's dominated
by stereotypically macho, aggressive ways of thinking.
It's not that women are better at this
or should be the only ones here. But I am here.
And not everyone in fire, lots of dudes included,
fits into the framework that we have right now.
We can't try to completely suppress fire
and just hope for good outcomes on the landscape.
And we can't be suppressing women in this industry
and hoping for a healthy culture.
We need more diversity everywhere.
Whoo! Oh, that's hot.
Can you get in there with me?
It's about to climb up.
Okay, you just take care of that one.
I'm gonna make sure it stays out of this one.
Oh, shit.
You have any other aircraft on order at this time?
I think we should walk back south.
No, negative... Meet up with our dudes.
Find an actual anchor point.
This doesn't count.
Yeah, uh... Quick. Ooh, it's hot.
Okay.
We need to... Oh, fuck. I'm tired.
Let's grab this, Ed,
before it gets to that tree.
And we'll tie these little patches of rock together.
I'll dig. You spread.
But don't... Don't overextend yourself if you're not comfortable.
Well, now we're into that.
Yep.
Which means this is not a useful anchor.
I'm saying, just walk that, start heading north.
Just walk that grass line, stop the... Stop the forward.
Well, yeah, but we got fire running up behind us,
in juniper.
It's kind of useless stopping the forward spread
if we don't have an anchor point.
That was moving way too fast for two people.
No way we were gonna catch it.
You still feel safe here?
Okay, Just making sure, man.
I mean, I'm responsible for you.
Work at the right flank, along the top of the ridge.
When I first started in fire, I didn't feel like
it was my place to rock the boat, because I wanted to fit in.
Now I'm past the point of, like, giving any shits.
I've never seen anybody suppress a fire with their penis.
It shouldn't hinder me professionally that I don't have one.
Firing, burn boss trainee.
Break holding, burn boss.
Go for holding.
If that heat is hot enough,
it'll pull this flame into the wind.
The primary wind direction is this way.
But there was enough fire there that...
That fire is drawing enough oxygen
that it holds this fire back and pulls it into the wind.
And that's a great way to deal with...
With corners.
- Go ahead. - Thank you.
I'd like to see a hotter fire, ma'am.
Whereas, if you let it peter out kind of into this low grass and stuff...
If you ask somebody, like, close your eyes
and picture a firefighter, a wildland firefighter.
Like tall, broad-shouldered, the handsome dude.
White dude, you know? Like, there's your mold.
And you say, okay, now think about a female firefighter.
You don't think about all the badass things.
Like, I rappel out of helicopters.
I weigh 135 pounds, but when I pack out from a rappel fire,
my backpack weighs 100 pounds.
So, fire takes a special person.
I think it's important from the learning perspective.
- Okay. - Um...
I'm a little reluctant to, like, break off, uh,
- firing and holding from the rest of the team. - Yep.
So, but that would be good for...
Be good for FEMOs. Okay.
For me, fire's never mundane.
It's like a personality.
Like, every time you go out and put fire on the land,
it has a different personality, every single day.
And you really have to respect that.
There's always been a power imbalance in a patriarchal society,
in a male-dominated environment.
We see it 'cause we feel it.
Women feel like, sometimes, they have to assimilate to that behavior
if they wanna fit into a male-dominated culture and environment.
And I even remember thinking that about myself.
I'm... I'm walking into a man's world.
There's gonna be some things that I can't be oversensitive about.
But, at the same time, I want to at least know you respect me.
Female Forest Service employees,
many of them firefighters,
have complained about mistreatment for decades.
In the past ten years, the agency has paid out
more than half a million dollars to settle claims
involving sexual harassment and assault,
and Congress has held two different hearings to investigate the problem.
There is something rotten
in the US Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.
Raise your hands on this, how many of you heard sexual comments from colleagues?
"Whore." "Slut."
"When you're done with him, can you sleep with me?"
"Get the back in the kitchen and bake me some cookies."
What did you feel was at stake if you reported it to the Forest Service?
Everything.
There is harassment, assault, intimidation, hostile work environment,
those are very real things.
And I know people who have experienced...
very awful things.
And that's not the entire story
for every person, everywhere, all the time.
It's not only about the individual, because we've created a culture
where those behaviors are normalized.
And we are all contributing to it,
whether or not we are "obviously" perpetrating that kind of harm.
- That looks pretty good. Mmm-hmm. - Yeah.
During briefing, Jenny was saying that the burn plan
for all the Tall Timbers units is the same,
and the objectives match.
And then, once the igniter's out and I get the okay from the burn boss, we're gonna...
We're gonna bring these two together.
When are you gonna hold up? - Point to here...
Ten percent of the fire service, they say, are women, and 90 percent are men,
and so, right away, Nikole and I were like,
"How cool would it be if we flip-flop the numbers?"
Like, let's invite 10% men and 90% women,
and get the male perspective when they're actually the minority of the group.
The women participating here are more than capable...
of every guy I know.
But I needed to better understand the hurdles
that were in front of them.
The challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.
And you cannot function well as a team
unless all members are treated equally.
You can't be something that you can't see.
And if you're a young woman working up in fire
and all of your supervisors are male,
they may be great leaders,
but if you don't have that vision
of what a woman leader looks like in fire,
how can you aspire to be that?
They don't have to fit the bill of what they're used to,
which can sometimes be very macho or very militaristic.
Those are, not necessarily, qualities that everyone wants to have as a leader.
It was the first time that I've ever been
in a operational setting with that many women.
Hanging out in the cabins at night,
talking about, you know, lives, work, everything in between.
- Look at you! Aw! - Oh, you're so cute!
Did we burn your home?
I'm sorry.
Sadie.
I found you something.
- Oh, is it... Is it one of those green tree frogs? - Yeah.
Let me see.
Oh, it's so cute.
Just having that atmosphere
of collective learning and growth,
and having that space to chat with other folks
who may be going through similar experiences as me,
you know, it really sort of lit that spark.
It's up to personal preference how you wanna run this.
If you wanna lay this here or you wanna have this on your shoulder.
This will give you a little bit more room.
- Okay. - Make sure it's in a way that
it doesn't dangle over your neck.
There are so many things I love about doing this work.
I love the way fire smells.
I love going home and being able to smell the smoke in my braids, still.
I love to be outside.
I love that I'm not working indoors.
I love that it's never the same.
You know? I don't walk into the same environment every day.
No two fires are alike.
There's constantly a challenge,
a new solution to come up with, and...
It's dynamic and it's fun.
And I... I honestly do work with a lot of really wonderful people.
If you don't really feel it in your heart and soul to work
in a very, very challenging environment,
it's gonna be a really, really hard career for you, a hard job.
But I do hope that you find friendships here,
that you find a community here that you can count on when you leave here.
Because, for me, the more that I can form
a network outside of my work at Yosemite
is really, truly, um, what gives me strength.
Here he comes again.
Or she... Here she comes again.
This is such a trip.
Get outta here. A hummingbird out here?
Like, hummingbirds are, like, attracted to, like, red, bright flowers and...
There's, like, nothing that would attract a hummingbird.
There's some like really cool energy going on here, isn't there?
You just have to kind of let yourself open to it.
And these, like, these magical things happen here in Yosemite.
Every day, every day here, something magic happens
that I'm so grateful for. Just eternally grateful for.
As a kid, I grew up with my grandmother taking us up to
her cabin on a lake. As young kids, we...
We had such a love for the outdoors through my grandmother.
The older I got, the more difficult it was for me
to be, like, inside four walls in a school.
Junior high, high school is when it really started becoming very difficult,
'cause it just felt like
there was so much incredible energy and beauty in the outdoors
that I just was having a really tough time.
I knew, at that point, I wanted to live in the outdoors.
I graduated high school, transferred to Northland College,
got a four-year degree in outdoor ed.
I met some really great people in college.
I loved the sense of spirit that I was receiving
from Native American students that I was going to school with.
That finally, kind of, started to fit my own ideals of what...
The outdoors, and what's important to me.
Be it the plants and the trees
and the birds and the sky and the air and the water,
so, all the elements, the outdoor elements, was... Is so sacred.
I felt like I had such a strong connection
to the natural environment
that I just wanted to be in it.
I wanted to live in it,
I wanted to try to understand it more.
I don't think we can understand the natural environment without being in it.
You can't read it from a book.
I can't experience it through somebody teaching me about it.
That, I think, is what drew me to making the decision to live in a teepee.
I knew it was gonna be cold.
I prepared myself for it.
But throughout the winter, crazy things happened.
Thirty below, by myself...
Most people thought I was completely nuts.
I'm sure there was bets made on me as to whether or not
I was gonna make it through the winter.
I was sleeping as close to the earth as I could possibly get
to try to understand all the changes that go on.
That, unless you're really in it and you're living it day to day,
you don't really notice the little nuances that really change.
And what was really neat for me is just seeing how,
as it got deeper and deeper into winter
and the light just kept getting less and less,
what it meant to keep a fire going, and keep it warm.
Feeling like I had that protection of fire...
in my teepee.
That sacredness of having fire protect me, keep me warm,
I knew I had to rely on it for my own survival.
After the spring started coming in
and things were starting to thaw,
I felt like I made it through a winter, 30 below,
there was such a sense of accomplishment.
I have anchored my entire life and my challenges to that winter.
I can look back on that time in my life and know that...
I came out a much better person and I survived.
I absolutely know, without a doubt, I chose my dream job
to come up to fire management.
But very, very few women choose this as a career,
and very few actually make it to the rank
that... That... That I'm at.
But all along the way, throughout my career,
these types of really difficult situations felt anchored.
Like, look, if you can live in a teepee
for one winter, and in the freezing cold, sub-zero,
You can do just about anything.
Thank you.
I knew I could get through it, 'cause it wasn't strong.
But just had to get it off the...
The first twist.
As you were going down, and then it twisted like...
I know, I was, like, goddamn it! -
Well, that was an interesting rappel, wasn't it?
Oh, my God!
This camera does have audio.
You might wanna move.
- That's gonna... - Thank God it was from behind me. -
This is the sound of Yosemite. Honking horns.
Somebody got locked out of their vehicle,
first thing in the morning.
Kinda cracks me up.
You think you're in a really peaceful place, and then, backup alarms and...
...security alarms on vehicles.
Kind of funny.
Then again...
Yosemite Valley really isn't wilderness
when you have, sometimes up to 30,000 people
coming through in a day or a weekend.
But there's always places to go.
Mmm.
Nice day.
I know what I forgot to put in there. Flaxseed and hemp seed.
More protein.
This is my air-conditioning...
today.
And the house stays fairly cool
if the windows are closed.
So, yeah, good check.
Right.
Doesn't get any easier.
All right.
Okay, I'll see you guys a little later.
Bye.
I remember talking to a friend of mine,
and she said, do you ever get tired of this?
And I... No, no, no.
The magnitude is... unbelievable.
And we're gonna see that today when we hike out to this fire
that we had a couple of years ago,
and you see the incredible blooms of wildflowers.
That's just... It's a... It's a piece of magic on the land.
We just have such a long way to go to help people understand
that fire creates incredible diversity and beauty on the landscape.
Right now, we're just...
We see the devastation and the news
and the people that are killed and...
I... I understand that from a...
An absolute tragedy standpoint of view,
but there's so much of it that we really have to kind of think about how...
How we... How that came about.
When we started exterminating fire on the landscape,
and we started persecuting it,
that fire was bad.
It needs to be put out.
It needs to be contained.
It needs to be subdued.
There's so many different kinds of butterflies coming out,
and they're all... They're different colors.
Of course, lots of bees.
Oh, some of my favorites.
When we talk about nutrient flush after a wildfire,
or any kind of prescribed fire,
what we're helping to do is actually take
the dead material on the forest floor,
when it burns, it releases a flush of nutrients into the soil.
And so what that does is make it available for tons,
thousands of wildflowers and grasses and forbs that we're seeing here today.
Normally these are really, really tight and they hold on to their seeds.
Um, but when they get a little bit of heat to 'em,
the cone opens up and they throw their seeds.
So you just start walking through and you're just, like,
"Gosh, they're just everywhere."
There's literally hundreds of 'em.
Initially, when you look out there,
you're like, "Oh, it's another green plant."
But it's actually a new tree.
This is...
This is what we really look at,
from a rich biodiversity perspective,
is when you see something like this come back.
Our interpretation of fire
is that it has killed these trees,
but it also gave birth to all these wildflowers.
Here you go.
Thank you.
Burn boss, go ahead for holding.
Hey, how are things looking? How do you feel?
I think things are looking really, really good and feeling very, very good.
Okay. Good... Good.
That was really good for me to hear that you get told all the time,
"Quit being so sensitive."
If they say, like, two female couplings don't go together.
and I'm like, well, they do in my house.
- And they're, like... - "Oh, she's a joke."
She's setting us up for a lawsuit.
She's totally setting us up.
It's like, I'm not setting you up.
- I was just trying to joke with you. - Setting you up for a high-five.
- That's great. - Exactly.
I was playing with you.
After 14 years...
- Yeah. - It was all good.
Now, all of a sudden, it's not good anymore?
I don't know what the rules are, you changed them on me.
You can't talk about how people make you feel uncomfortable,
'cause, then, they feel uncomfortable for making you feel bad.
- Yeah. - So I was, like, you have to take it.
- I wasn't taught that at all. - Good.
I was actually taught it's perfectly okay
to have an open discussion about things as long as you do it in a positive manner
and you're not pointing fingers of blame.
What you're saying is, you said a bad...
You said a hurtful thing, and I would like you to change it.
And what they hear is, I'm a shitty person,
and they don't wanna feel like a shitty person.
But, sometimes, you can't convince them
that that's not what you actually said.
Yep. I'm outnumbered and... Wrong time and place.
Yeah. And I think, what you said,
I don't feel respected on a daily basis.
That's pretty simple.
I need to feel respected, to be effective as a team member.
But explaining why I don't feel respected,
that's compli... That is not simple.
Because you say, like, "Well, my boss called me a girl."
Okay... Brush it off, let it go.
And I said, "Well, my boss called me a girl 48 times this week."
You know? And I let it go 46 of those times,
and then pointed it out twice,
and now I'm difficult.
That's not really simple to explain to someone who hasn't...
experienced that.
And that's just one example.
The amount of energy that I spend
regulating my emotional response
to my work environment is ludicrous.
I mean, I spend a lot of mental energy on the work itself.
It's a dynamic, risky environment
that we're constantly reassessing and evaluating.
That itself is exhausting.
To add on top of that, being constantly aware
of the fact that I'm in an environment
that's... Like, a cultural environment
that doesn't feel totally welcoming
and 100% safe.
That's just an added energy expenditure that I don't...
I don't think I have the capacity to keep doing that
for the rest of my career.
One of my fears is getting to the end of my life
and not thinking I impacted anything.
It scares me to think that I could live for 90 years,
thinking I'm doing cool stuff, helping people,
but in reality, my 90 years could have never existed
and the world would be exactly the same.
I feel some sort of duty to like, leave fire culture better than I found it.
For the people who've come into fire after me.
I mean, given that this is the only grown-up job I've ever had,
a lot of the people I care about in in my life are firefighters,
or involved in fire somehow. So, like, I care about that world,
and I care about that culture,
because I know how damaging it can be.
And, like, if there's something I can do
to help make that better, I want to keep doing that.
So much of culture is reinforced and perpetuated,
not by active praise of the things you're doing,
but just by not getting in trouble for them.
Silent acceptance.
It's really hard to make a fish recognize water.
- You're here! - Hi, Lacey!
Oh, so glad to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah. Come on, let's eat.
If you can pull it away from sexual harassment
and make the point that it's about people in charge
dominating people that aren't in charge...
Right. It's not a gender thing. It's a power thing.
Yes, and you can get every man in the room to come back.
Because the minute you stand up there and say sexual harassment,
the men that aren't inflicting it or don't see it happening,
- just tune out. They're like, "Well, that's not..." - "That doesn't apply to me."
If you can be like, "Well, the same guy that's patting you on the ass,
and calling you cupcake,
is also bullying some soft-spoken dude,"
he's not just picking on you and me.
He's picking on anybody he thinks he can get the upper hand on.
Did I tell you? I was heavy equipment processing,
and I had, like, nine pieces of equipment,
and I was finishing up my side and I misspoke.
I said 800 ton instead of 80 ton.
Mmm-hmm.
And the dude from the Southeast took my mistake,
and he just magnified it.
- Can't just move on. - No.
And, um, he was like, "Whoa, that's like so and so many pounds."
And I looked right at him, and like,
"That's some good math. You're really good at math-ing, aren't you?
"Your mom must be proud."
As soon as I left, he said to that group of dudes,
he was like, "Well, she could be a handful."
What does that translate to?
- "What a bitch!" - Yeah.
God, I hate it.
- I hate that so much. - And my buddy...
My buddy stood there and he's like,
"No way. She takes care of her own.
"You should have seen her in Alaska.
"She threatened to kick a bus driver in the balls."
And he basically said to that dude,
and to every other dude in the group that,
"No, she... She's cool."
Mmm-hmm.
"That was an appropriate response for your shitty comment."
Pretty much is what he said.
And then every dude in the group, he said, "She's cool."
And... And that's the way I feel at work.
- I feel so supported and... - That's awesome.
I'm just another person.
It kind of started for me, I was talking to one of my supervisors,
and he said he wouldn't want his daughter
to go into this line of work, and I was like, "Why? It's been...
"As a woman, it's been the best thing that's ever happened to me."
- Mmm-hmm. - It's made me strong and confident.
And best thing that's ever happened to me, this job.
And it was sad that he said he didn't want his little girl doing it.
Yeah. I've had men that I worked with say that too, like,
"If I had a daughter, I'd never let her be a firefighter."
But what I wonder is like...
How can they...
How can they acknowledge that on one hand,
that my work environment is so shitty and toxic
that I don't want my family in it,
but on the other hand, not do anything about that?
Like, how can they recognize that it's awful,
and also not try to change it?
- Yeah, just sit back... - Just sit back and go,
"Oh, yeah. I just won't let my daughter in."
Because everybody wants to fit in.
And they don't want to be "that dude" that stands up and causes a scene.
- You know? - I know.
That's why I've just resorted to being "that woman."
What you reading there?
It's called Trust Exercise.
I'm almost done with it.
I'm still not quite sure what it's about.
It's fiction, like,
then the narrator becomes somebody who is in the first half of the story.
- Mmm-hmm. - Mmm-hmm.
One of them, just, like, wakes up, and turns out she was just, like,
bitten by a bat, and had...
...been in a coma.
A bat, huh?
That's how I see this ending. And she's like, "Whoa!"
All right, babe. I got ten minutes left.
I don't want to go to work.
Don't. That's what they do.
But then how are we gonna afford a new battery for Karen?
That's true.
We can't deprive her.
Okay.
If I was born as a man,
I think it just would have been smoother.
I grew up outside, doing outdoor things.
I enjoy manual labor.
Otherwise, I match the demographic.
I'm young, I'm white.
I check a lot of the boxes for, like, standard firefighter,
but my being a woman, like, puts me in this whole other category.
I see men around me in fire world
just trash it out and screw it up all the time
and everyone's like, "Eh, didn't work. Try it again in a different way."
But if I do the same thing, if I don't, like, calculate exactly
how I'm going to play this game,
and I just try stuff and then it doesn't work,
then they're like, "Hmm, see, women just,
"like, aren't really cut out for this."
I just...
I don't think I would be at this level of tired after only ten seasons.
I can't tell you how many times I wanted to back out.
You just don't wake up one day and just go,
"I think I want to go testify in front of Congress
"about these egregious acts that have happened to me in the past."
I was just having, you know, huge reservations, and really consternating
over whether or not this was something that I should do.
I felt like the mere fact that I was watching this happen
to, uh, more and more women,
and even to some degree, some men,
then I think you have to ask yourself, "Do we all stay silent?"
That, I think, was the tipping point.
But the day that I got on the plane,
I sat up close to where the door was, and I kept thinking,
"I still have a chance to get off the plane.
"I still have a chance. Still have a chance."
And as soon as the door shut, I just kind of closed my eyes
and just had to take a deep breath,
and as the plane started pulling back from the gate,
that's when I think this irreversible journey really began.
Every state I flew over, you know, was just this flood of memories
about all these people that have supported me.
The men that have been super supportive of me over the years
and several women who continued to support me.
I felt like, "Am I putting all of this at risk?"
Female Forest Service employees, many of them firefighters,
have complained about mistreatment for decades.
Numerous park employees from multiple parks
have contacted the committee to describe patterns
of misconduct at the Park Service.
It was a similar report 16 years ago.
The task force concluded, and I quote,
"It is critical for the National Park Service to show a sense of urgency
"in ensuring that all employees are working in an environment
"free from unlawful harassment."
Were any of its recommendations implemented?
Uh, no, they were not, as far as I can ever figure out.
So... So we're back here again 16 years later.
Yeah, it's a very regrettable action that did not occur.
I felt it was really, really important,
because I've been involved in this for so long
that, somehow, I... I had to have not just my voice heard,
but there were so many other people that were also feeling the same way,
and they flat out said, "There's just no way I can come forward and say anything."
And so, a lot of people will continue to ask,
you know, why didn't you come forward?
How come now you're reporting?
Those are questions that people constantly ask,
because they don't understand how difficult it is to speak up,
and speak the truth about these things that have happened,
because of the dire consequences most women face
when you do speak up and are honest about the things
that have happened to you in the past.
My name is Kelly Martin, and I am the Chief
of Fire and Aviation Management at Yosemite National Park.
I've been in my current position for over ten years.
I am here before you today to tell you my story,
but more importantly, to provide testimony
regarding the dark clouds of misconduct
that remains elusive from public view.
I felt like I have a voice. I can use my voice.
This is the United States.
We do have the ability to use our voice
for the betterment of this generation and the next generation.
Imagine for one minute, being 20-something again.
We have an idealistic view of the world that is equitable and just.
My idealist view was soon shattered
when I became victim of sexual harassment not once, but three times.
One of my perpetrators was repeatedly caught engaging in voyeuristic behavior,
all the while receiving promotions within the National Park Service
until his recent retirement as Deputy Superintendent.
This is very difficult to sit before you today.
I'm not boastful of the history of my sexual harassment experiences.
As a matter of fact, this is the first time I have come out publicly
to describe the painful scars of my past
in a hopeful effort to eliminate these kinds of experiences
from happening to young women entering our workforce today.
It's almost as it's accepted that men can be given
the benefit of the doubt, and women are doubted.
As I walk through my 32 years of service,
I want to leave here today with a strong conviction of hope.
Hope for the future generation of the Park Service conservation leaders
that will not know what it is like to experience sexual harassment,
gender and racial discrimination,
sexism and hostile work environments.
We're going to be watching the National Park Service,
and the way Ms. Martin is treated,
and other whistleblowers are treated
as a consequence of their bringing these allegations forward.
Uh, it should not be unaddressed,
and, uh, it has been inadequately addressed.
We all long for a day
that we don't have to take these extreme measures
to be heard and believed.
A hell of a job for just two people in a few hours,
having to drag trees quite a ways.
But,
got it done.
We're making a log deck
for the helicopter to land on.
Might not be the prettiest.
But it's a log deck.
The only wildlife we've seen while we were down here,
are all the mosquitoes.
And other flying pests.
Hopefully pilot doesn't have a problem with it,
and we won't have to come back and fix it later.
Some people can't imagine using the bathroom anywhere but inside a building,
on porcelain.
But come on, it's way better out here.
So we were on our way to Helena.
And got diverted to a fire up in the Bridgers. A lightning strike.
As you can see, there's the part of the tree that got struck.
You can see it...
kind of exploded into bits.
Not tall anymore.
And there's pieces of it hanging
up in that other tree.
It's these kind of fires that really split my mind
about loving my job and not make me feel conflicted.
On the one hand,
what an awesome place to hang out.
No people, just hanging out in the woods.
Super pretty.
Gonna camp for a night or two.
Can't complain about that.
On the other hand, this was a naturally ignited fire,
it's a lightning strike.
And it wasn't really doing much, skunking around.
Hard to tell how steep it is.
Uh, this is basically a 45-degree angle here.
So it's not a very big spot,
should be pretty easy to put out,
except that the duff is super thick,
and even digging down, like,
couldn't get to dirt yet, this is still mostly duff...
So this is going to be a slow mop-up show.
Basically... picking everything up by hand.
Making sure it's cold.
Should I be out here putting this fire out?
You know, um...
As I learn more about fire and fire science and fire ecology,
and how important fire is to, you know, the well being of an ecosystem.
I feel less like I'm taking appropriate actions
as a steward of the land.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm getting paid to do things
that aren't in the best interest of the ecosystem in question.
I don't know.
So I just sit here and eat my Snickers and think about it.
Nothing better than a Snickers
that has melted
and resolidified a handful of times in your backpack.
Do you guys, uh, do you guys want a pancake?
Ready for a pancake?
David, do you want one? Are you sure?
- No, no. Yeah, I'm done. - Okay.
You're anti-pancake?
You a huge fan of pancakes? - Yeah.
So you're not biased. You don't have any implicit bias
- against pancakes. - No implicit bias.
Copy that.
We've been talking a lot about implicit bias.
Just want to make sure.
There's one thing, you know, that we can do
is kind of, you know, there's a little bit of humor here.
We can laugh about ourselves.
Yosemite conditions for today.
Sunny, maximum 64 to 69, 8,000 feet, 53 to 58.
The thing for me was, um,
with you getting here this weekend was
thinking about the success that we've had for the last three events.
That third WTREX really felt like...
- It really solidified a lot of things. - Yeah.
And there was new people there from
reaches of the Nature Conservancy,
National Park Service, Forest Service,
uh, NGOs that are like,
"I'm kind of really interested in attending and helping."
And then, like I think, for me, that was, like, the tipping point for...
We're on to something that that I don't believe
anybody else is really doing.
- Mmm-hmm. - And so...
Now what does that look like?
You know, for the next three years or the next five years.
And this could go any... Any number of places.
That's really exciting.
Like, it feels like we've taken kind of a slow road with WTREX
and just doing one event per year...
I think our pace has been perfect actually,
because we kind of needed to have that success.
- Mmm-hmm. - And to show that we could do it,
and to build out our team and feel smooth,
like a smooth machine together.
And now we're at a perfect point
to broaden it out, and...
I think any of us coming up through the ranks,
think about, like, what kind of opportunities
- do we really have to build our competency? - Yeah.
Right, there's confidence in what we love and what we wanna do,
but where are the opportunities to actually really build
- our physical skill set? - Yeah.
Yeah, the way I think about WTREX moving forward
is that we do diversify and think about
where are those bottlenecks for women in fire,
and how can we create those opportunities.
Leadership training, um, you know, the diversity and inclusion training...
We could even do short modules on burn planning,
and, you know, some of the ecological concepts.
I don't know. I think the sky is the limit, kind of...
We think about women in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s,
as they're moving through their career,
we're not interested in just getting more women in fire,
but we're interested in what does it take to...
To keep them in fire, if that's where they want to be,
and to advance them and give them power
and leadership capabilities and stuff.
We really need to...
You know, we understand what some of those obstacles are in WTREX,
but as federal agencies, we really, we've got a lot of work to do still.
You know, both from scaling up the good fire
as well as how do we empower women
in leadership positions in wildland fire?
And there's just... There's nothing else, like, out there like this.
And so that, for me, is really exciting to think about,
how I can put my two loves and passion
about gender equity
and more good fire on the landscape.
- This is just like the perfect combination. - Yeah.
I'm grateful that we met.
- Yeah, well... - I'm glad you came up.
I'm so glad.
I think we have a really strong future ahead of us.
Oh, yeah, with a tremendous amount of, you know, work.
And so I think... Thinking about that, too,
is, it's like, "Ooh, I'm sort of kind of retired." -
So I'm excited about that type of work on the outside
in retirement as well.
You're good. Don't worry.
Oh, okay, okay.
- That's just the beginning. - Got you there.
Gotcha, gotcha.
Yeah, yeah.
Coffee, friends.
What else could you ask for?
My hubby.
This'll last about one hour.
I was telling her, this is really...
Nobody waters the grass around here.
This place is really dusty and dirty...
It kind of goes back to the "opposites attract."
I'm Mr. Clean.
I met Kelly in Moab, Utah.
She knew one of the people on the team,
and he called her up and said, "Hey, we're gonna go down and have a beer."
So that's where I first met her.
From then on, teams that went together,
and we became part of a fire team,
and from there on, it's just kind of like,
you know, good people attract good people.
I just remember this one time we were on a fire out at Battle Mountain,
and this was before we were together,
and we... She had a broken arm.
Fell off a horse.
A Forest Service horse.
She... She says, "You sure you want me on team?
"I've got... My arm's in a cast."
I go, "Well, can you push the mic on a radio?
"And can you walk up a hill and look at what's going on and keep track of stuff?"
And she goes, "Yeah." I says, "Well, come to the fire."
She's a tough woman.
In the agencies, all of them,
the tough women tend to survive it,
um, because it's not an easy road.
One of the worst things that ever happened was, um...
And I didn't hear about this for like two months...
One of the women on the fire crew,
she used one of the BLM bathrooms
and the fire crew decided they were gonna tape her in there with duct tape.
And so, Kelly told me one day she's going to go to Congress
and she was working with staffers from both sides.
You know, she's always the hero.
When she decided to retire early,
an individual sent a note that said that, "Thank God she's gone,
"and now we can get to a higher level of management for that agency."
And I'm going, "You got to be kidding me."
You can't believe what she went through.
It would take three hours to tell you all the crap that she had to go through.
Drugs on the crew,
fights and people getting hurt, and they're covering it up
and car wrecks and smoking dope
and driving government vehicles.
You cannot believe what she went through.
So, tonight is a celebration.
We've got lots and lots of food, So let's go ahead and eat,
but there are a couple of people I really want to introduce.
My mom, Mickey Martin.
- Mom! - From Illinois.
Yep, she flew in from... from Illinois.
It's just really a neat opportunity to be with all of you here tonight.
- So... - Whoo-hoo!
And I bet you there's gonna be people kind of showing up from time to time.
So please introduce yourself to each other, and let's eat.
- Okay! - Let's do it!
I met Kelly at the first WTREX, 2016.
And I had no idea who she was before that.
But I read through her testimony and watched the video.
And then I was like, "Hoy shit, I'm gonna meet this woman.
"That's pretty cool."
You know... Here she is,
talking about the hard things in front of a huge audience,
then met her at WTREX. And... And it was awesome.
You know, and she's been...
She's been great to work with.
Branches over there can help build.
And it was... You know, she's just so passionate
about fire and what it means
and how we should be treating it
and how it should be used on the land.
And you know, it feels...
It feels good to be around somebody who is so...
sure of what they believe.
You know, like...
She's had people telling her not to believe what she believes
for the past 35 years, and she's like,
"Well, fuck it. This is still what I believe, because it's that important to me."
And, like, that feels good to know
that there are people like that.
Um... Yeah, I think she's awesome. She's really wonderful.
She gave her life and her heart to that place.
And I'll never support that program again
just because I know exactly the depths of that.
She was working at 10:30 at night.
Sometimes she'd work till 2:00 in the morning,
to get the fire plans done.
And, um, she was, I would say, 90% successful.
But there was a lot of people that didn't like her
because she tried to clean up the shop.
Yeah. I have to tell you that seeing her testify
was the most awesome experience,
and to know that she did that in September '16, 2016.
She led the pack and wound up onTime magazine
as one of the silence breakers, which was just absolutely amazing.
I must have run to every gas station,
every grocery store, and bought every Timemagazine
I could get my hands on that night, because I thought
"They're gonna be gone if I wait till tomorrow."
- Thanks, Mom. - Thank you, honey.
Somebody... Somebody had to speak up.
And I think our agency, the National Park Service,
is a better agency because some of the things that we've been able to address.
I feel like things are starting to change.
I know a lot of you don't... Some people really, uh,
have really resented what I've done.
Um, I would have never chosen to do anything like this,
but I really, honestly felt like our agency deserves way better.
And I know we have really, really good people here.
So, for all of you that are here with me tonight,
I do know that I've done the right thing, I hope,
and that I'm still...
She was never respected.
Because she was an outsider,
and I feel because she was a woman.
Because they'd never had a woman FMO.
I see a lot. So, I love it. It was Kelly that...
We were sitting here at Christmas time...
Oh, boy, 2013,
and she just said to me, she goes,
"What are you waiting for?" And I said, like, "You're right, you know."
- "Let's do it." - And in the next month,
- I was enrolled in TREX, so, yeah. - Yeah, awesome.
Love Kelly. She's a little special person to me. I love her to death.
And you... You started this.
No, you're the one with the stick. You started it.
- I was fixing it and then you undid my work. - Ah! Ah!
No, I was working with you.
No, you undid it.
You need to learn to work with other people.
You need to learn to mind your own business.
The fire is my business, I split all that wood.
Only after you messed up whatever...
Nah, I split the wood.
Do you have this look on camera?
I do.
Oh, and there's ice in his whiskey. That's why.
No, it's not me.
I'm sure you can find more things to dislike about me.
I can. How long do we have?
- Probably a couple of hours. - Okay, great.
- We'll work on it. - Yeah. No rush.
We'll work on... No, I'm...
- Take your time. - I'll let it marinate.
Take your time.
I could turn on my light, but there's enough around...
There's no one out. So, we're it.
There's no one here and it's incredibly powerful.
Uh, there's just nothing like it.
There's very, very few people that actually experience the park like this.
So, to me, it's a lot more intense and a lot more fulfilling
than to be out here when there's a thousand people on this trail.
So, let's go have a good time,
and we will drink some whiskey when we get to the beach.
Okay, whiskey over here.
Whiskey over here.
And there's tobacco here if anybody wants to start with their own little offering.
I actually want to throw it in the river.
I'm gonna honor my dad tonight.
Do you remember... You remember when I was reading your son
- Goodnight Moon? - Yes. Oh, my gosh!
I know, huh?
Goodnight Moon.
He was just, like, a little kid, little shaver.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you were like, "Yes, you can read to my son."
Moon in my room.
Anybody else want some tobacco?
Here we go.
Wow, this is a bonding experience.
- How are you feeling? - Great.
Connections, and...
This is half the fun of having a big party like this.
- It's like... - Yeah, bringing together everyone.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
This park's going to be so different without you.
- Oh, stop. - No.
This woman was like, "Do you know that Kelly has changed the park
"and she really speaks up for what's right even if people don't want her to?"
And I was like, "Yes."
You just never know.
I mean, you're all gonna find yourself in a position someday to just go,
"This is my moment. I don't know if it's right or wrong."
You're gonna step into it and you just...
You can change the world.
We are gonna miss you though.
I'm gonna miss you guys very, very much.
We're like, yeah, we know you're amazing
and a rockstar and also, never leave us.
We know you have bigger and better things to move on to,
but we're gonna miss you.
You know, the fun thing is just knowing that...
"Okay, so I'm in my 50s and you guys are in your 30s and 20s."
And so it's just this cross-generational, like, empowerment.
Women empowerment is, like, really cool.
Just, like, embrace it, take it on,
and, you know, just, like, own it.
I wanna live in a matriarchal society.
- I'm serious. - I mean, the United States is gonna be that soon.
- Soon. - Well, it's all gonna be up to all of you, right? And me.
I mean, we're all part of it, right?
I haven't seen that before. - Me either.
I made a friend.
Here we are in my last operational shift as a firefighter.
We've been here on the Horsefly Fire for couple of weeks.
For sure, I will be hiking again and backpacking
and doing the kinds of things that I've done in this job,
but not for this job.
Not as a firefighter and that will be strange and exciting.
It only took about a week into this season
for me to feel affirmed in my decision to leave.
It was very clear very early that it's a good decision
for me to make this my last season, so that felt good.
Knowing that I was making the right choice for me.
But because it's been so slow, there's been lots of time for me
to keep thinking about that
and wondering what would it look like and what could I do?
Is it worth staying in it so I can keep
trying to make the culture better
and keep influencing people's perspectives
and maybe changing their mind and helping them learn,
and there's been some back and forth.
But it's definitely... It's time to go, it's time to move on.
Crazy how much stuff you accumulate over the years.
I think the one thing I really didn't expect
in retirement, when you leave, it really is a hard stop.
You're done with phone calls,
you're done with your computer, you're done with your keys.
Everything gets turned in on a Friday afternoon.
And Sunday, I find myself going over Tioga Pass
really early in the morning.
Watching the full moon set and the sun rise.
And that's a moment I am never gonna forget.
'Cause that was another huge transition in my life.
I think there's some kind of endorphins that keep firefighters going,
because that's what we do.
And then when you come to the abrupt stop of a retirement,
you feel both elated, relieved,
but you really begin to feel the exhaustion has really caught up to you.
This little tarragon is a cutting from a friend of mine.
She's got goats and a cute little garden and...
I just like plants that are given to me.
It reminds me of them, of friends.
It's hard to explain the subtle
and sometimes blatant way that the agency was treating women.
And not just in fire and not just in law enforcement,
but in the whole area. And when you see an indicator,
you know, in fire, the indicator is low humidity
and high temperature and some wind.
Well, when you see a lot of people leaving the agency
and most of them are women,
there's a big indicator there's something not right.
So this is kinda sour, but it complements the maple syrup.
Oops!
The trigger point in '16 happened when
reading the story about the sexual harassment at Grand Canyon.
And to be honest with you, it was that trigger point
that I immediately just closed my eyes
and threw my head in my hands and I'm like,
I can't believe this is still going on.
I just can't believe that women are asking
and describing situations, horrific situations.
And nobody did anything.
And I thought to myself,
these are young women just like I was at their age
at Grand Canyon just starting their careers.
And they've had this horrific thing that's happening to them.
And they're reporting to senior level officials
who are basically sweeping it under the rug.
And it was that moment that through remembering
my own experience with the peeping Tom,
who continued to promote for another 25 years within the Park service,
uh, arrested several times by the way.
And still kept promoting, so there's this... How can this be?
So this lifetime of experiences of things that, you know, have happened to me,
and now I'm in a position at Yosemite, a very powerful position,
and a very high level position,
where I just never felt validated.
After 30-some odd years of working very, very hard
to some of these assignments being given away
to subordinate men or being oppressed and dismissed.
I just felt like this can't continue to happen.
So, in my testimony, I do talk about creating
gender parity at the highest levels.
You can't just relegate women to non-authoritative type of positions.
They need to be responsible in positions of authority, in positions of power.
And we just have not gotten there.
So, knowing that that power disparity exists,
that's a place where we should recognize
that there's still work to be done to try to reduce that disparity.
And on my way home.
And I'm going to take the not very direct route home.
Um, but while I'm on the road,
figured it'd be a great time to stop by and see Kelly.
Talk about fire.
Catch up on things, see how retirement is going for her.
Talk about my next chapter, you know, it'll be good.
Hi!
- Hello! - It's so good to see you.
Aw, look at you. Oh, you look so good.
I'll be on campus starting August 17th.
Well, it'll be like three days a week on campus
and two days a week doing rotations in the hospital.
We won't be working with patients that require, like...
More involved precautions than just standard gloves.
So, they really try to limit that then?
Yeah, you know, I don't.
I don't know what it usually looks like outside of a pandemic situation,
but that's what they've told us to expect
going into this semester.
And other than that, I don't have a whole lot of information.
Obviously, I'm not a nurse yet.
But it's kind of like fire, everything...
Everything that's worth learning, you learn on the job.
I... I hope, I'm pretty sure
that I changed some people's minds over the past ten years
when it comes to attitudes about
who's supposed to be in fire, who's good at fire.
And I don't think I would have been successful changing their minds
if I had picked every single fight with them that I could have.
You know, if fire is something that you really wanna do,
which is a legit choice, a valid choice,
you gotta pick your battles so that you can move towards the final goal.
And you know...
I fucking hate saying this,
but shit's gonna happen, you know.
You're gonna work with assholes.
There's gonna be some sexist shit going down.
Some misogynistic stuff.
And no one else is gonna say anything about it.
Eventually I got to the point where I didn't feel like I had a choice anymore.
It was, like, leave or this is going to destroy you kind of thing.
And if fire culture was not what it was,
maybe it would have felt more like a choice.
I read something recently about kind of the trauma that communities go through
of having to evacuate all the time and I'm thinking to myself,
imagine what that's like as a career firefighter.
You know, year after year after year
that they're being exposed to hundreds of houses being destroyed
and people's lives being lost.
We know that that's the business that we're in,
but I don't think we've really elevated it to the status of...
- Well, in knowing... - This is trauma.
Knowing that it's part of your job doesn't make it easier.
You know, that's a "routine" part of your job.
Like, it's still a thing you're going through.
It's still, you know, they can still be a traumatic event.
But I think the conversations are starting to happen.
But I'm really hoping that... I would like to see that expand
to a more holistic understanding of who we are as people, you know?
The fighting fire, the putting fire out part is one aspect.
You know, and then there's the mental health thing.
And then there's the leadership development
and the interpersonal communication and the relationship building.
You know, those are all separate things and it seems like,
most of those just get sidelined
to focus on the putting fire out part, you know.
I would love to know
from some of the men I've worked with in the past, like,
"What do you remember me saying to you?"
You know, maybe it's a conversation I don't even remember,
but I said something that took that person back
and they were, like, "Holy shit."
There is one experience that stands out very strong in my memory.
There was a person I was working with
who was new to the crew, a crew that I had previously been on.
And this person came in
and decided that
I was not going to be a good firefighter.
This person who had never worked with me before.
You know, I was too small.
I wasn't strong enough,
you know, obviously, I wasn't going to be able to pull my own weight or whatever.
Whether he was trying to or not, it was clear to me.
And it got to the point where the rest of the crew
was being impacted by, like, us not getting along.
The crew boss pulled us aside and said,
"Give me your version of events. Give me your version of events."
You hear it from each other, so we can figure out where the mismatch is, you know?
It all boiled down to, at the very end, I was like, "Okay, look,
"there's one thing I need from you that would help me
"feel like the situation is resolved."
I said, "I don't need you to be my friend
"or to want to work with me,
"or to even think that, you know, like, I'm a great firefighter.
"I simply need you to say that I'm competent, you know.
"Not great, not the best, not you wanna work with me all the time.
"Simply, I am competent at my job."
Pretty low bar, pretty low bar, what I thought.
And he looked at me and said,
"Well, I'd be lying if I said that."
I didn't know what the fuck to say.
My crew boss was standing right there and he didn't say a fucking thing.
Here's the man who hired me in the first place,
then hired me back because apparently he thought I could do the job,
and was competent.
And here's this other person, new to the crew,
who's barely worked with me for a season
saying, "I don't even think you are baseline competent,"
and nobody else fucking said anything.
And I was like, "Okay, well, I... This is it."
And then the conversation was over and nobody ever fucking addressed it again.
I was like, "Okay, well, I guess, I guess I'm on my own."
You know, I didn't...
Goddamn it, that happened...
Happened a long time ago and it still makes me...
Still makes me cry. Oh, and it made me so mad.
I think I probably cried then, too.
And it's that like, I'm so mad I don't know what else to do but cry.
But that very often gets interpreted
as like, "Oh, my God. Look at her. She's crying again. She's so emotional."
But it's like, you don't understand.
I'm crying because I wanna rip your head off.
Not because I am sad, you know.
And after that, I was like, well, I guess it doesn't fucking matter.
That situation I had tried to talk to people,
I had tried to say, this is happening. I need support.
And it didn't matter. The situation didn't change for better or for worse.
I don't regret leaving at all.
I'm so glad I did not...
It was just time.
You know, and I don't...
I don't say that to, like, shit on anyone who's still doing it and loving it,
or doing it and not loving it and they're just choosing to keep doing it, like...
You do you, but for me, it was just...
It was time to be done, move on.
And I don't regret it at all.
I don't regret spending ten years doing it.
But I'm very happy to have made the decision to not do it anymore.
It was time.
Kelly's cafe, Kelly's car wash.
Kelly's BnB.
Yeah, that's all good.
Thank you so much for hosting.
Thank you for coming by and putting me on your path.
And thanks for the time that you spent in fire.
You made a difference
Yeah, I hope so.
You did. You absolutely did.
I changed at least one person's mind maybe somewhere along the road.
I think you should put your standards a little higher than that.
I think you had a big impact on a lot of young women.
So, myself personally, I appreciate that.
Aw, thanks.
Well, I'll definitely... Whenever we're allowed to have a WTREX in person again,
- I'll see you there. - Please.
Okay, good. So you're not giving up on that?
- No, I think WTREX is the one thing I'll stay. - Good, good.
You know, 'cause that's the part I care about.
Making fire better for the next firefighters
and I can do that without being a firefighter.
You know? So I can still be a part of that.
Good. Well, I'm glad to know that.
- Good. - I'll be around.
Okay, dear. Oh, take care. I love you.
- I love you, too. - All right. Best wishes.
- Gotta hit the road. - Text me when you...
- When I make it? - When you make it.
- Nine hours is a long time. - Okay. Yeah, it's gonna be a long drive.
I got snacks.
- Good. Cookies? - All right.
I got cookies.
Yay!
Good woman.
I wish she was still working with us.
I feel so empowered by people that are so different
from one another and I think that's probably the key.
Everybody has a different journey and a different path.
You know, the time that I spent working
in the fire environment, I would never give up.
I just knew as a young kid even that this was what I wanted to do.
I learned a lot, but made a lot of mistakes.
But I also, I think it was an incredible journey.
The only reason I could have a career in fire
that went as well as it did is because of the women 40 years ago who fixed stuff.
You know, Kelly put up with a lot of bullshit over her 35 years.
I have no doubt that if I had met her earlier in my fire career,
you know, things might have been different.
Yeah, I know things would have been different for sure.
As the new Deputy Director, I'm personally committed
to providing a culture of transparency,
inclusion, respect, and accountability
and making this a safe place for employees to work.
We want to become a model agency.
We will become a model agency.
♪ You can hold my hand
♪ When you need to let go
♪ I can be your mountain
♪ When you're feeling Valley-low
♪ I can be your streetlight
♪ Showing you the way home
♪ You can hold my hand
♪ When you need to let go
♪ I want a house With a crowded table
♪ And a place by the fire For everyone
♪ Let us take on the world While we're young and able
♪ And bring us back together When the day is done
♪ If we want a garden
♪ We're gonna have to sow The seed
♪ Plant a little happiness
♪ Let the roots run deep
♪ If it's love that we give
♪ Then it's love that we reap
♪ If we want a garden
♪ We're gonna have to sow The seed
♪ Yeah, I want a house With a crowded table
♪ And a place by the fire For everyone
♪ Let us take on the world While we're young and able
♪ And bring us back together When the day is done
♪ The door is always open
♪ Your picture's on my wall
♪ Everyone's a little broken
♪ And everyone belongs
♪ Yeah, everyone belongs
♪ I want a house With a crowded table
♪ And a place by the fire For everyone
♪ Let us take on the world While we're young and able
♪ And bring us back together When the day is done
♪ And bring us back together When the day is done ♪