"Jumping Fire" is Murry Taylor's memoir of his life in the smokejumper, the elite air cavalry in the war against wildfire. Taylor spent thirty-plus summers (longer than anyone else) parachuting into remote parts of Alaska and other western states to put out fires. Using the framework of a single fire season, he describes the routine of training and preparation, limns the strengths and foibles of his co-workers, and gives vivid, suspenseful accounts of his participation on half a dozen fires. Woven into this journal form is a short course on the equipment, techniques, logistics, and organization used in fighting wildfires. For most readers, the activity and culture Taylor is writing about is as alien as the one Margaret Meade described. It is no less fascinating for that. The smokejumpers have their own rituals, myths, and legends. To themselves and their friends they are proficient warriors in a struggle against a powerful unpredictable enemy -- fire. Chuck Yaeger crossed with Frodo Baggins. Wounds are frequent. Victory is temporary. Fellowship is all-important. They become addicted to adrenalin and overtime. Taylor follows moments of high drama with self-pitying reflections on his failure to maintain long-term relationships with women. During the summer the book recounts, he manages to sandwich two sexual relationships in between jumping fires all over Alaska and in central Idaho. The pages he devotes to those matters might have been better spent giving more details on the conflicts among the various governmental agencies charged with protecting our public lands from wild fires.

Thanks to Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, I have no need to climb Everest. Thanks to Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, I do not have to go long-line swordfish fishing in the Grand Banks during hurricane season. Now, with equal gratitude to Murry Taylor, I have been purged of any desire to parachute into a destructive wall of raging flame in western Alaska armed with nothing more than rope, shovels and a Pulaski axe. (Actually, Taylor also jumped into fire zones carrying a dog-eared copy of Lonesome Dove and a plastic-bottled fifth of Jack Daniels.) Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire describes the life and work of the most venerable Alaskan smokejumper and the other crew with whom he risked his life regularly in the hot Alaskan summers. It is, on the surface, as gripping a work as the other authors' in its description of the excitement, danger, and backbreakingly hard work of line firefighting. But it also describes the life trajectory of one blue-collar American in the latter half of the twentieth century. Taylor, who comes across as a modest but candid Renaissance man, reflects on why he went to the wilderness and why he stayed. His has been a life alternating between keen loneliness and rollicking battlefield camaraderie. His tone in describing all this is one of equal parts humor, romanticism, melancholy, and a wry realism. At one point, Taylor bestows on another oldtimer colleague the accolade that he was "truer to his core nature than any man I've ever known." That description would just as readily suit the author. Besides being a heckuva writer with a gripping story to tell, Murry Taylor sounds like a man the reader would like to meet.

Jumping Fire By Murry A. Taylor lets you looking to the the life of a smokejumper and how the job changes the lives of these brave men and women. Soon after you start reading this book you realize that not just anyone can do the job they do. As you read this book Murry takes you thru a fire season with him. He does a great job at making you feel like you are there and a part of the action. He tells of fighting fires against all odds and winning and he also tells stories of sadness and loss. I am a full-time firefighter myself only in a city. I don't have to deal with the feeling of being hundreds of miles from no where with little food or water. Also I don't spends days on a fire at a time after a few hours I get to go back to a nice clean station and a nice clean bed. As you will see in the book it takes strength not only physical but emotionally. You will see how the job effects every part of thier lives. I never knew much about the job they do until I read this book. I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did. I have a new found respect for Smokejumpers and all the brave men and women fighting fires today. I still think you have to be aliitle crazy to be a smokejumper. Stay Safe!