I work with the US Forest Service. For many years I worked as a wildland firefighter, on type II hand crews, fire engines, and for a brief time on a hotshot crew. I currently work in Public Affairs.

I grew up in western Oregon where the fires are larger and less frequent, then lived in Nevada and Eastern Oregon for 15 years where the fires sweep through every summer.

I realize that a summer without smoke from wildfires is not an option, but I hope to see more smoke in the spring and fall from prescribed burns and less smoke from wildfires in the summer. This photograph is of a prescribed burn on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.