Inside the Flames: The Untold Story of a Hotshot’s Fierce Battle for Survival
To be a hotshot is to lean into the contradiction of firefighting. Nature requires fire and destruction for rebirth. Humans need to contain wildfire to prevent casualties and protect the seeds of capitalism: businesses and so-called economic “progress.” Firefighters may be “saving” mother earth, the ultimate symbol of the feminine divine, but the only people deemed worthy of doing this work are men. Where a reader might see devastation and tangled ruins, Selby sees a way to learn from, and gain solace within, the paradox of wildfire: “There was so much I didn’t know. I was just a hotshot. I couldn’t see that the landscape needed cleansing by the flames I was supposed to extinguish.”
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