Here is a completely un-affiliated link to Norman Maclean’s masterpiece, Young Men and Fire, a book that is deeper and kinder and better than most of the books we have created as a society, and one that can be re-read every year of your life.

“I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy, where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky, but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death.” –Norman Maclean

Here’s some more information on the work done by hotshots crews in wilderness areas and a link to some donation options.