The Ugly Sky

Rumbling and low, a plane circled over my house.   I ran outside after the first pass and watched the plane bank a circle above my house three more times.  Boxlike, slow, I could tell it was a smokejumper plane.

On the third pass, I clearly saw a man peering out from an open door near the tail of the plane as the plane banked directly above me.  Following the same pattern established on the first flight, the plane looped over the hilly section of nearby State-owned school trust property and headed back toward me again.  Just then, I noticed a streamer trickling down to the ground on the state land.  At the same time, that girl came driving down our road after a trip to Helena. 

I pointed up to the sky as that girl approached the house.  She brought the car to a firm stop amid a cloud of dust.  “I think that plane is going to drop some jumpers!” I exclaimed.

That girl climbed from the car and stood by me.  “I saw two Forest Service trucks at the bottom of the hill before our turn,” she told me.

“That’s weird.  We don’t have any National Forest property around here.”

Both of us saluted against the midday sun and smoky sky, following the plane overtop the house and across the prairie again.  Shortly after passing over the hills where the streamer dropped, two small shapes fell from the plane and within a few seconds became men under parachutes.

Let’s stop here for a second.  Montana burning up this year is an actual thing.  Given the huge hurricanes and North Korea, you don’t hear much about it.  But it’s real.  Just this morning, our local newspaper noted that Montana has seen over a million acres scorched by wildfires.

So there we stood, watching two jumpers drifting down to the hills from an ugly sky.

“Do you think there is a fire over there?” asked that girl.

“I don’t think so.  I am thinking this is just practice.  I don’t think Forest Service jumpers would fight fire here.”

After watching the plane circle and drop jumpers two more times, we hopped in my truck and drove up the road for a quarter mile and parked at the nearest junction.  We watched the last two jumpers land; watched the jumpers mustering on a hill.  They were close enough we could hear their voices.  We had not been there long before a truck drove up.  The man inside drew down his window.  “What’s going on?”

“Not sure,” I responded.

“Might just be a practice exercise.”

“That was my thought.”

The man, Buck, by a later introduction, told me he was going to find out for himself what was happening.  I gave him my phone number so he could call me with information.  After Buck drove off, that girl and I watched the jumpers milling around the hill where they had mustered.  My phone chirped no more than a minute later.  Buck was calling.  “Just an exercise,” he informed after our greetings.

“Good to know,” I said.  “Thanks.”

Practice is good.  Given our present fire season and our ugly sky, watching was a little scary, but practice is good.

Posted are a few photographs I captured with my smarter-than-me-phone.

--Mitchell Hegman