The reporter's life: A wildfire, an exploding juniper tree, and a life-saving sprint

Behind me, down a dirt road snaking into an eastern Oregon desert canyon, flames feasted on tinder-dry sagebrush and juniper.

Ahead of me, a cowboy tumbled off a flatbed truck when a big juniper full of berries exploded like a Roman candle.

To my right, a steep canyon wall in the Oregon desert. No way I could climb up that.

To my left, a descent into a wildfire creeping up the canyon.

Maybe this is what hell feels like, I thought.

How exactly, I wondered, did I get here?

My editors at the daily newspaper I was writing for in Oregon had sent me out in the morning on what I considered a plum assignment: Cover a wildfire in remote rangeland.

I had a camera, a notebook, and a pen. I wore Air Jordans, faded denim Levis the color of the sky, a t-shirt and flannel shirt and a ball cap.

Thought I would blend in covering a heroic bid by a determined group of ranchers and cowboys to halt a wildfire racing across the dry grass, sagebrush, and juniper they grazed their cattle on.

I was miles off the nearest highway, traversing dirt roads through canyons and hills. I followed the smoke and terse directions from a rancher’s wife to the canyon where I found a smattering of pickups parked at the top.

I walked down the road until I came to the crowd of “firefighters.” The ranchers and cowboys lit backfires on one side of the dirt road in hopes that the fire climbing up the canyon wouldn’t jump the road and keep heading east uphill.

I knew I had amazing photos of the rancher on the back of the flatbed spraying down the backfires to keep them from flaming up. He looked like an Old West gunfighter, but with a hose squirting water connected to a water tank with hundreds of gallons of water in it.

The thing about junipers is that those berries are full of alcohol. It’s how you make gin. Thousands of berries in big clumps hung on the huge juniper in front of us.

Alcohol and fire … not a good mix.

Especially on a roasting hot day in a canyon surrounded by brush and grass sucked dry of any moisture.

The juniper tree exploded in flames. Behind me, flames. Ahead of me, a flaming juniper tree. To my left, a burning canyon. To my right, a canyon wall.

My only option was to sprint ahead, hug the canyon wall, and hope I didn’t go up in flames with the tree.

I made it, to state the obvious. Probably never sprinted that fast in my life. My sprint came with with painful light burns to my exposed skin on my left arm where I tried to shield my face and the left side of my face.

I remember driving the hour or so back to the newspaper office, my arm and face throbbing.

When I walked into the office, my fellow reporters and editors looked at my beet red arm and face and asked, “What happened to you?”

This was back in the pre-digital age. I handed the film from my camera to a photographer for him to process. “It’s all right there,” I said.

Then I plopped down and started writing, telling the story.

I knew I was in trouble when ... (And lessons learned along the way).

I knew I was in trouble when …

I hit send on that email to a faraway corporate boss, even though something inside me said don’t. (I learned not to do stupid things like that anymore.)

As a young reporter, my editor who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize told me not to write an article like that anymore. (I studied his writing style and technique.)

As a new writer, I asked my manager what kind of style we use in writing our content and she said they don’t follow any particular style in the company. (I got our writing team to adopt AP style and also made a style guide.)

At a small company, my bosses gathered our team, told us how hard things had been financially in the firm and cut everyone’s hours. Then they booked a vacation to the Caribbean. (I left that company shortly afterward for a better gig.)

I was the newspaper’s Saturday reporter and got an eyebrow-raising assignment to go to an inner-city apartment complex for a story about a recent murder victim. Fortunately, I called the regular crime beat reporter—who was incredulous someone would send me there—who referred me to a police sergeant to make sure I had company. (My instincts were right to call our crime writer and double-check the assignment.)

I was sitting in an Oregon coast funeral home covering the death of a fishing boat captain whose chartered boat went down in rough water, costing the lives of several of his passengers. The fisherman sitting next to me stared intently at me and told me twice he was going to break my nose, probably because he didn’t like the stories he read about his friend.. I walked briskly out. He followed me. My photographer across the street saw the fisherman closing in on me and turned his camera on the guy, stopping him in his tracks. I’m forever grateful to the great photographer and my friend Sol Neelman. (Always make good friends with your photographer.)