The sky above Surry County, North Carolina, smells of burnt wood and heavy soot tonight. The atmosphere is hazed with a melancholy brown smoke and the forest is eerily calm. The chestnut oaks and the pitch pines creak from the dryness of the air.
And a wildfire on Pilot Mountain rages on. The fire started Saturday.
From a distance, the top of the mountain looks like a glowing ember of Kingsford charcoal. Three hundred acres have been consumed, and that number will have grown by the time you read this.
Andy Griffith was born and bred in Surry County, just 14 miles up the road in the hamlet of Mount Airy, otherwise known as Mayberry.
Pilot Mountain State Park is a magnificent place. The Yadkin River, one of the longest rivers in the Old North State, weaves directly through the pine-choked corridor of the park before easing its way into South Carolina.
There are trails here with overlooks pretty enough to compromise the well-being of a cardiac patient. On a clear day you
can stand atop Pilot Mountain and see halfway to Fiji.
Simply put, this is God’s country.
Meanwhile, atop this 2,421-foot flaming quartzite rock, fire crews work incessantly, battling wind changes and dry conditions, trying to contain hell.
These are men and women who will likely receive no public recognition for their bravery. Which isn’t unusual in their line of work. Firefighters, like all public servants, are accustomed to being overlooked.
One of my longtime friends is a career fire medic. He says, “We fly under the radar. I won’t say that we’re overlooked, but most people don’t really stop and think about what we do. But hey, it’s okay, we’re not doing this for the press.”
Right now, there are 29,705 fire departments in the Lower Forty-Eight. There are roughly 1,115,000 career and volunteer firefighters in the U.S., an estimated 93,000 are female. The Forest Service employs…