The Day I Stopped A Wildfire

It was around this time fifty years ago. I was at Starved Rock State Park, along the sandstone bluffs above the Illinois River, with a friend of mine, Victor Sargent, who worked as a photographer for the local newspaper.

We were scouting locations for a Super 8mm movie I was determined to make before leaving for the Air Force.

 

Back then, I still believed in that version of myself—the one who might have gone on to become a filmmaker. The one who saw stories everywhere and thought all he needed was a camera and a little time.

 

We were on our way home, crossing over the river, when I saw it. A glow deep in the woods downstream. Even from a distance, you could tell it wasn’t small.

 

My friend saw it too. Without saying much, he pressed the accelerator, and we pushed through Utica, cutting across back roads toward Route 6, trying to get closer.

 

I don’t remember how we decided where to go. We guessed. Or maybe we just trusted that instinct you have when something doesn’t feel right and you can’t ignore it.

 

We ended up pulling into a cemetery near the old LaSalle Dive-In, back before it became something else. The place was quiet, the kind of quiet that settles in early, as if it already knows the day is over.

 

At the far edge were a few houses. We got out and knocked on the first door we saw. I remember talking too fast, trying to explain what we’d seen, how big it looked, how it might already be spreading. I wasn’t even sure I was making sense.

 

But it was enough.

 

A few minutes later, we were walking with two men from the house across a field where horses grazed, heads down, unaware.

 

It was dusk now. The light had that soft, fading quality—everything dimming, but not quite gone. The kind of light that makes you feel like you’re standing between one thing and another.

 

We reached the woods. The fire was still there. Not huge in the way wildfires are out west, not something that would make the evening news—but big enough. Alive enough. Moving through brush and dry ground, pushing forward in uneven bursts.

 

And it was headed toward the field.

 

The two men had brought shovels. I picked up a fallen branch. My friend lifted his camera for a second—just long enough to frame it—then lowered it and stepped in.

 

We worked without much talk. Dirt thrown over flame. Branches beating back the edges. The smell of smoke settling into everything. No sense of time, just motion and heat and the quiet understanding that if we didn’t stop it here, it would keep going.

 

Toward the horses. Toward the houses.

 

Eventually, it gave way. The flames dropped, then disappeared, leaving behind blackened earth and small threads of smoke rising into the cooling air.

 

And then there was nothing.

 

Just four of us standing there, catching our breath, the woods already beginning to look like they had before—except for the ground, and the smell.

 

A day or two later, there was a small story in the paper. My friend must have filed it along with the photos. My name was mentioned. That was the extent of it.

 

No one called. No one followed up. Life moved on, the way it always does.

 

But I’ve thought about that day more than I probably should have over the years. Not because of the fire, exactly. But because of everything else surrounding it.

 

I remember who I was then—standing at the edge of something, believing I had time to become whatever I wanted. A filmmaker. A storyteller. Someone who would chase moments like that and turn them into something lasting.

 

And in a way, I suppose I did. Just not in the way I imagined.

 

Maybe that’s what most of life is, in the end.

 

Not the big, sweeping moments we think will define us—but the quiet ones, the unexpected ones, where we step into something without thinking and do what needs to be done.

 

No audience. No recognition.

 

Just the moment itself.

 

And the person you were in it.