‘Wildfire Days’ Follows a Female Hotshot Battling Megafires

Updated June 30, 2025 06:03AM

On Kelly Ramsey’s first day with a Californian hotshot crew— an elite team of wildland firefighters—she’s not only scared she won’t be able to keep up with the intense physical demands of the job, but worried how her fellow firefighters will take to her. She is the only woman in a crew of 20 men, as well as their first female team member in ten years. And at 38, she’s also among the oldest.

While Ramsey overcomes “the bro show” and her crew’s skepticism, she finds herself on the front lines of the some of the fiercest wildfires the West has ever seen. Bringing us along with vivid prose, she battles both the megafires and the insidious psychological toll, and ultimately earning her crew’s respect—and even friendship.

In her intimate and action-packed memoir, Ramsey wrestles with the power of fire to both destroy and renew while confronting her own internal struggles and self-destructive patterns. Asking herself: “Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?”

In this excerpt from her new memoir, Ramsey recounts her first day as a hotshot and what it took to make it not her last.

The sun rose over the station and the sleeping hamlet of Baudelaire, light snagging on the cold river surface. I could think of nothing but what I might face on my first day as a hotshot. Aspiring hotshot.

The firefighting crew I’d subbed onto for several months at the end of the previous season, Crew 2, had included five women. Now I saw that I’d taken that experience for granted. Even a few girls could tip the scales, and the men would slowly self-correct, subtly softening their language, their jokes, even the way they spat. Not here. The bro show was in full effect, and I realized with horror that not a person in sight could loan me a tampon.

My fear redoubled when a man named Fisher, a Goliath in wire-rim glasses, barked at us after lunch: “Gear up to hike! We’re doin’ French.”

The boys rushed the saw room. I didn’t. That was my first mistake of the day, though hardly my last. I knew they were grabbing chainsaws so they could do the hike with extra weight, a good way to prove yourself. But I reasoned I was already at enough of a disadvantage. The men were huge. With the exception of a guy named Ishmael, they were all larger than me and draped in muscle. For this first hike, it couldn’t hurt to carry the ordinary forty-five-pound pack and a five- or ten-pound tool. I’d stick with what I had until I saw what I was up against.

He sidled over, a Dolmar in his hand. A Dolmar, or “dolie,” is a red plastic jug that holds several gallons of fuel, with separate compartments for saw gas and bar oil. We hiked these into fires so the chainsaws could easily refuel on the line.

He smiled and walked off. I slid my Pulaski—a wooden-handled cutting and digging tool—through the handle of the Dolmar, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and almost cursed aloud. The dolie nagged my shoulder blade and sloshed against my back. The pack hung down past my butt and thumped against the back of my thighs. Everything was oversized, awkward, and heavy—65-plus pounds altogether. I started to panic.

For a fleeting second, I wished desperately that I were a man, with a man’s body. Then I rebuked myself for the thought.

Like a line of ants, we walked through the lot, left the station, and crossed the street (“Crossing!”). On the opposite side of the highway, we filed into the entrance to a hiking trail with a sign that read, “French Hill.” Van stopped.

“This is our crew’s most basic hike,” he said. “While the standards for hotshot crews in terms of running and everything else do apply, doing this hike successfully is the main requirement for staying on the crew. It is mandatory for being allowed to go on a fire assignment. I’m not sure if we’ll go all the way up today, but if we do, it’s three miles, and crew time is under an hour.”

My heart was beating so wildly, I was surprised my shirt didn’t pulse. Three miles an hour meant a sub-twenty-minute mile. That’s a reasonable pace on flat ground, or with just one’s body weight. With seventy pounds, up a steep hill, that pace is hauling ass. I thought I might hyperventilate, or drop dead before we began. And perhaps that would be best.

“I’ll set a reasonable pace,” Van said. “Keep up, don’t gap out, and close the gap if there is one.”

He turned, pressed a timer button on his watch, and called “Moving” as he began to walk (speed-walk) up the trail.

We began to climb through an open-canopy forest littered with ferns. I pushed myself to keep pace as the boys fast-stepped and the hill began to rise. I was soon huffing for air, the Dolmar swinging and thumping and the pack thudding, tripping up my legs.

By the second switchback, as we stepped over a small creek, I was starting to fall behind. You were supposed to keep no more than two feet between people; any more was “gapping out,” which gives the per- son behind you license to pass. The gap between Keller and me yawned, and I watched his gangly body begin to pull away—three feet, four feet, five—

“On your left,” a man grunted as he powered by me, falling in between me and Keller.

I tried to. I watched the boot heels of the man in front of me, and I huffed and puffed, my heels digging into the earth, the Dolmar pressing down, trying with all my might to keep the two-foot spacing. But I couldn’t make my legs go any quicker; it was is if they were made of lead. It began to happen again—four feet, five—

“On your right!” Another man, brushing past me. “On your left!” Another one, breathing heavily.

Before I knew it, I was in the back. Everyone had passed me except Benjamin, that day’s “drag,” the one who comes last and picks up the stragglers. Fuck. Benjamin, or “Benjy,” was a barrel-chested Indigenous Hoopa man with dark hair longer than mine and a beard to his belly button. A twenty-year hotshot, a legend, he was also the person who’d taken a chance on me and suggested I be hired—in other words, the last guy I wanted to let down.

By now, the switchbacks were tightly stacked. I could see the main pack above me, one or two switchbacks ahead, a line of men with chainsaws balanced on one shoulder moving at an effortless clip up the steep slope. Between me and the pack were a few others who had also gapped out—Keller, another rookie named Miguel, and somebody else. But that wasn’t comforting. Not only was I very last, but the interval between me and the next person continued to grow, until I lost him every time he went around a corner.

I huffed, I gasped. My heart and lungs felt like they were being put through a meat grinder. I tried to will my body to WALK, SPEED UP, but my legs just wouldn’t. My quads screamed. My calves seized. All my worst fears were coming true, and I might be having a heart attack, too.

Finally, I realized that we were hiking alone, me and Benjy. He had snuck up behind me and was quietly hiking on my heels, his pace just fast enough to make me feel pushed. I couldn’t see anyone ahead of us.

“Thought you trained this winter,” Benjy said gruffly. “I did. Just not like this,” I gasped.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.” I fell silent. Breathing was enough of a struggle. Sweat poured off my face.

We climbed in silence for a while. The longer I went without seeing someone ahead of me, the worse I felt. I started to picture how I’d be fired at the end of this. “Just not a good fit . . .” Or maybe I’d resign. The crew had quite literally left me in their dust. I figured it was a good time to give up, apologize, and walk off this hill forever.

But just then, Benjy started to coach me. “This is the last steep pitch,” he said. “Hang in, keep it steady up this stretch, and you’ll get a little break.”

“Okay,” I breathed. I came to the top of the hill, and he was right. The trail flattened slightly as it passed through an open stand of timber.

“Good,” he said. “Now, you’re gonna come around this switchback here, and the trail’s gonna flatten out through a kinda saddle. When you hit that, pick up some speed. That’s where you can gain on ’em.”

I did, scurrying my legs as fast as I could manage, almost jogging across the flat. Benjy effortlessly kept pace with my burst of speed and said, “Good! Now you’ve got it.”

We neared the end of a mild hill where the trail leveled off as it crossed a brush field.

“You’re almost there,” he said in my ear. “You can’t see ’em yet, they’ll be kinda hidden. But you’re close. Start pickin’ up speed now, and when I say run, you run, okay? Run as hard as you fuckin’ can. Finish strong.”

“Okay,” I breathed shakily and dug in, speeding up marginally. As we left the timber and entered the open slope, I saw a few hard hats, somewhat obscured by bushes maybe forty yards out. Oh god. They were going to watch me coming. The last one. The slow one. The girl. It was a big, shamey show. What if—

And, not believing it was possible, sure I had nothing to give, I broke into a sprint—or as close as I could get under all that gear. Pack bouncing against my tailbone, quads pulling, calves cramping, my Dolmar thumping and shifting dangerously on my shoulders, I ran up the last stretch of hill between me and the crew. I ran like my life depended upon it. And who knows, maybe it did.

As I got close, the guys began to yell. To my surprise, it wasn’t insults or jeers. Instead, like a sports team, they were cheering for me.

Through the din I saw Van. “Just get to me,” he said. He was standing, arm extended, acting as a finish line. I sprinted the last ten yards, the boys screaming, “YEAH, KELLY,” and when I got to Van, I stopped short and low-fived his hand, letting the Dolmar slide to the ground. He was wearing a huge grin, one that lingered.

The guys went back to talking, gathering their stuff for the hike down. I could barely stand. I was heaving, soaked in sweat, and thought I might vomit. I put my hands on my knees, willing the puke back down. I took off my hard hat and mopped my face with the sleeve of my yellow. Benjy, coming up behind me, cuffed me on the shoulder.

Van addressed all of us. “Alright, boys. Er—guys. Alright, everybody.” He laughed self-consciously. “Well, first hike, and that wasn’t too bad. Now you know what you’re up against. We definitely have room for improvement. Some people were gapping out, and our time at the front wasn’t great.”

“Some of you,” Van said. “Seemed to be phoning it in. You looked like you were walking. That’s unacceptable. I don’t care if you’re first in the pack or dead last. I want to see you going as hard as you can. Look at Kelly.”

He pointed, and they looked. I froze in horror. I couldn’t see myself, but I could feel myself: a hot mess. My face turned beet red with even the mildest cardio, so I knew it was flaming.

“That’s what you should look like when you get up here. That’s the effort I want to see.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes, like Oh, trust me—nobody wants this. I was humiliated. But how nice of Van to say that. It was really, really nice, and I never forgot it. I had learned something important: Effort meant a lot here. Trying might even be enough.

Adapted from Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West by Kelly Ramsey. Copyright © 2025 by Kelly Ramsey. Excerpted with permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

‘Wildfire Days’ Follows a Female Hotshot Battling the West’s Megafires