The Farmers Club

The “Club Notes” for Saturday, the 20th of July, 2024.

By Dwain Duxson

The stop-running story

Here's a story I found recently, it got me thinking about when someone forced us (Farm Tender) to stop running (you will get it when you read the story). I will follow up with the Farm Tender story below this one.“In 1949, a wildfire broke out in a place called Mann Gulch, a remote area of Montana. A team of 15 smokejumpers, highly-trained wildfire fighters, were flown into the area and parachuted onto an otherwise inaccessible mountainside to begin hemming in the flames. Almost as soon as the team hit the ground, the wind changed, and the fire turned against their position. All they could do was run up the mountain. These were 20-something, athletic men in their prime. But running up a mountain carrying more than 50 pounds of firefighting equipment while a blazing fire bears down will stretch anyone to their limits. And unfortunately, 12 of the firefighters perished in their flight. Three survived, including their captain, the oldest man in the group, Wagner Dodge. The heartbreaking reality, from Dodge's perspective, is that more could have survived. He did not survive because he was more athletic, stronger, or had greater endurance. He survived because when he realised he could not outrun the flames, he stopped immediately, threw down his gear, and started on another solution. What Dodge did was pretty amazing. It was not something he was trained to do; it was an action based on a principle he understood. He burned an escape fire– essentially, he lit up all the fuel in a small area ahead of the fire and then hunkered down in the burn scar he'd just created. In this way, he was able to stay put without getting burned up and wait until the burning edge of the fire passed him by. It was still harrowing, but he made it”.  Reply to [email protected]

The Farmers Club - Non-Commodity Thinking

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