“Gratitude in the Fire”
Q&A with firefighter Jackson Johnson

Jackson Johnson took courses at Au Sable’s Great Lakes Campus in the summer of 2018. He has worked on prescribed fires and wildfires in California’s Yosemite National Park, Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, and across the country. He is currently a lead firefighter for a U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew.

What have you been up to since being at Au Sable?

I’ve bounced around. For my first job after graduation, I worked for a company doing biological surveys on wind turbines. I would survey how many birds and bats that wind turbines were killing. Then I got a job working at an aerospace engineering company for four months before getting my first [firefighting] job in Georgia for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s prescribed fire program.

What do prescribed fires involve?

In Georgia, a lot of their prescribed fires are used to manage habitat for the [endangered] Red-cockaded Woodpecker. It’s removing midstory and understory growth to promote a more mature pine forest for the bird. The prescribed fires I've done elsewhere out west are also for habitat management.

I’m currently in Illinois on a hotshot crew. It’s a 20-person crew for wildfires and prescribed fires. We go to forests and parks that need help running their projects or need help with wildfires. They plug our crew in wherever they need the most help.

What draws you to the work?

I like the mental and physical challenge of it. Most of our assignments are 14 days. It’s a lot of rugged terrain and can be very complex with the fires going on. There are a lot of interpersonal dynamics, staying in communication with different people.

How did your time at Au Sable influence where you are now?

Au Sable was the first place that really got me into learning more about the outdoors. I always liked being outdoors but my college classes never really stimulated me. My professors would tell us to go outside and do stuff but they wouldn’t be present themselves. They were elevated above me and it didn’t seem like they had time for questions. They didn't show an interest in me.

The Au Sable professors really took the time to talk with me, explain things, and connect on a personal level. They would go out with us and really be present with us. That drew me into the field and showed me a passion, not just on the educational side but the research side, that I had never seen before.

Au Sable also really drew me into the “Serve, Protect, Restore” motto that they have. It was definitely the best experience I had in my educational career.

Was the perspective of serving, protecting, and restoring creation something that you grew up with?

I grew up Baptist. I had never been taught that from the church. But that was definitely ingrained in me from my family. Every summer my parents would take me and my brother out west to national parks. We were taught to appreciate these things that we got to see. That’s what Au Sable really drove home.

How does your faith connect to your current work?

I’ve always personally felt my relationship with God more strongly when I'm outside in the natural world. Getting to see God’s creation in all these amazing places, it’s hard for me to be out there and not think about my faith.

This last summer was one of the more impactful experiences. I was on a wildfire at Yosemite National Park. I had detailed into a helicopter crew. We got to fly through the Yosemite Valley almost every day. That was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity, getting to see the beauty of the park and take in all the sights, getting to be in these remote areas that a lot of people won’t ever get to see. I’m pretty lucky to have the job I do.

Are there spiritual practices that help you connect your environmental work with worship?

With what I do, the remoteness and the difficult scheduling, it's hard for me to get a routine down. But something that I do find myself a lot doing is practicing gratitude. It can be really challenging sometimes. We’re hiking in deep uphill, carrying a lot of weight, and it's hot. It’s not the most fun. A lot of what keeps me going is the gratitude.

It’s hard for me to think of a day when I’ve been out on a fire and I haven’t looked up seen something and just been in awe, been grateful for the experience.