Editor’s note: Lenya Quinn-Davidson is the Fire Network Director for the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Director of the Women-in-Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) program, and a long-time contributor to the Fire Networks blog. In this post, Lenya reflects on the importance of centering humanity and care in fire. Blog cover photo: colorful flags in Jalisco, Mexico. All photos credit to the author.
If you’re like me, you feel most alone when you’re flying somewhere. Strangers everywhere, air pods in, shoes and belts off, simultaneously exposed and invisible. I love the flow of people, everyone going somewhere, adventure and business and novelty in the air. For an extrovert like me, this social solitude is oddly delicious. I can eavesdrop and observe from the comfort of my podcast, or my computer, or my book—alone in what feels like a very social setting.
The other week I was on my way to Santa Barbara for work. Two short flights and a layover in San Francisco—just enough time to sink deep into my own thoughts. I spent the first flight gazing at Mount Shasta over the mountains and valleys where I grew up, flipping through photos of my 10-year old son, and listening to the whimsical tunes of Gregory Alan Isakov—settling into my quality time with myself. In San Francisco, I grabbed a glass of wine and tackled a stack of papers on the public health impacts of wildfire, part of a science synthesis I’m working on. If you haven’t gone there, you should. The losses are staggering, and so are the disparities in impact: how is it that farmworkers, firefighters, the unhoused, kids, and other vulnerable folks are taking the biggest toll in a narrative that mostly centers on those of us who own properties and homes? We can harden our homes, but what about our lungs, our families, our food systems?
My reading reminded me of what I’ve been calling The Year of Cancer. So many sad moments in 2024: early May, when my sweet friend (and forestry icon) Ryan Tompkins died at 49 after a shockingly quick battle with esophageal cancer. A month later, when we lost my father-in-law (and restoration icon) Evan Engber to cancer. And only weeks after that, when I happened to be in the hospital with my friend (and prescribed fire icon) Will Harling when he received the first in a series of increasingly dire cancer diagnoses. Will was especially present in my reading at SFO, because his doctors have hypothesized that his extremely rare form of cancer was likely caused by smoke—from his lifetime breathing smoke in the wildfire-prone Klamath Mountains, not far from where I grew up, but also from his work in prescribed fire, where he’s been one of the most passionate and transformative leaders. After months of the most severe treatments, Will was (amazingly!) declared cancer free last week, but his story is haunting me. Did you know that wildland firefighters have up to a 43% increased risk of lung cancer, and a 30% increased risk of cardiovascular mortality? Did you know they’re exposed to more than 30 carcinogens in their day-to-day work? As a firefighter friend told me when we talked about this a few days later, “I know that research is out there, but I guess I’ve been avoiding it.” I think we all have been.
I packed up my computer at SFO and headed for my gate, warm from the wine and the reading and the intensity of my own mind. I was thinking about the smoke, the cancer, the debris flows and fish kills, our seemingly tireless tendency toward worse fire outcomes, and I knew I had to write a blog. It’s been more than a year for me—the longest in my 10-year history with FAC Net. I’ve been missing it.
On my next short flight, I developed a whole plan for this blog. I’d go deep on the suppression bias, a concept I’ve been obsessing over for months, ever since Mark Kreider published his paper in Nature Communications and put in plain terms what I’ve been thinking for so long. I’d connect it to public health—to The Year of Cancer—to all the pain and inequity that are lost in the focus on pace and scale.
But when I landed in Santa Barbara, my friend Lyndsey Lascheck was there to pick me up—she was waiting at the curb in a huge 15-passenger van, presumably missing happy hour after a long day of meetings, alight with a huge smile and the best laugh anyone’s ever heard. I could have grabbed an Uber, but it was so much better to have her there waiting for me.
We drove the 15 minutes to the hotel, where all the burn bosses for The Nature Conservancy were together for their annual refresher training. The group had come from all over the country—too many amazing people to name, as expert in good conversation and good times as they are in burning. I enjoyed a Thai dinner with some of my favorites, then fell asleep with the sound of the waves crashing just outside my room. And I questioned why, for a holiday blog, I would want to write about all the sad things in fire when I could write about this: the people, the passion, the warmth that keeps us all coming back, despite the sadness.
If you know me, you know I love hosting parties. I’m never happier than when I’m bringing people together, preferably over an amazing meal and with fun cocktails and good music. One of the highlights of my day is making breakfast for my son, sprinkling microgreens over avocado toast or improvising some sour cream pancakes. I always think that I’m a pretty marginal fire practitioner, but I’m a great host, and I’ve always tried to infuse my fire work with my passion for hospitality. But I can’t say I ever thought of hospitality as a leadership skill—until recently.
In November, I read a book called “Unreasonable Hospitality,” which has its roots in the restaurant industry but has application far beyond the kitchen. The book, written by Will Guidara, is all about “giving people more than they expect,” and using hospitality to perpetuate joy, create feelings of belonging, and change the culture of our work and lives.
As most of you know, fire is not a particularly hospitable field. Premised in military structures and attitudes, the dominant fire culture can be cold and unfeeling—more about safety, hierarchy, and suffering than compassion, innovation, or joy. That never felt right to me. In my early prescribed fire work, it sometimes seemed that the humanity and fun were lost among the qualifications, org charts, and incident action plans. Though our early TREX events were providing a unique opportunity for people from diverse backgrounds to train and learn together, there was still a military vibe; we were pushing boundaries in a demographic sense, but I wasn’t sure we were doing enough to change the actual culture of this work. If I, as the lead organizer of an event, wasn’t totally comfortable, how was everyone else feeling? As Guidara reminds us in his book, people will forget what you do and what you say, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. (Pictured left: Andrea Bustos, Maria Estrada, and myself at WTREX Jalisco)
One of my first pivotal moves was to bring my mom along. Like me, her love language is food, and I brought her in to cater our very first Nor Cal TREX in 2013. This was early in the TREX movement, and I think it was one of the first times anyone had hired a caterer to travel with the group for the full two weeks and provide all the meals on site. Not only did it simplify logistics, but it also created space for connection and joy. People who camp together and burn together can’t help but feel connected, but my mom’s enchiladas and brownies accelerated that process, filling people’s bellies and souls. Now, on-site catering is not only common practice—it’s become a core ingredient of TREX, a cultural necessity. And my mom, Tara, has become a fixture at TREX events all over the country. In my fire travels, some people know me as Lenya, but many just know me as Tara’s daughter. I love that.
As I grew in my prescribed fire work, my sense of hospitality naturally extended beyond food and into the realm of qualifications and access. After years of hosting TREX and WTREX events, I felt stifled by the rigidity of National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) qualifications, personal protective gear (PPE) requirements, and other federally inspired standards that had become social norms in our work. We were serving so many people through our events, and yet so many people were missing. It didn’t sit well with me.
When we first brought the prescribed burn association (PBA) model to California, it was a true hospitality move. It wasn’t about acre targets or task book signatures—it was all about people. I’d never felt as good on a burn as I did on our very first Humboldt PBA burn in June of 2017, surrounded by community members and landowners, many of whom were in blue jeans and ball caps. Over the next few years and through the incredible growth of PBAs in California, we stayed true to this hospitality mission. At their core, PBAs are about inclusion and belonging—making sure everyone has a role in this work if they want one. In fire, that’s more revolutionary than you might think. These ideas of belonging have been at the center of all the policy work we’ve done in California, too: breaking down barriers to entry, bringing everyone in.
Our Women-in-Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) program has moved in a hospitality direction, too—a pattern that’s been most palpable at our international events. This fall we brought the program to Jalisco, Mexico, where the local team spoiled us with amazing meals, local gifts, and warm welcomes in every place where we stopped. In one town, the mayor hosted us for a multi-course lunch on the plaza, complete with a DJ and full Day of the Dead décor. The warmth we all felt went far beyond the spicy pozole we were eating that day—everyone felt seen, and everyone felt spoiled. And that, my friends, is a leadership move.
As The Year of Cancer comes to a close, my reflections are two-fold. In some ways, it’s a dark time in our fire work. The problems are immense, and we’re asking so much of ourselves and of each other. It can be tempting to slip in the air pods, settle into your seat, and fly high above the problems and solutions. In this way, we might find ourselves working together but still feeling alone.
For me, I’ve decided to explicitly center the things I love—food, parties, and people—even though they may not seem like they have a place in fire. It turns out that warmth, connection, and hospitality have a place everywhere, they just require a little extra attention and energy. This holiday season, as you’re enjoying hospitality at home, I encourage you to think about the role it could or should play in your work. As Guidara says in his book, we need to “make it cool to care”—about the work, yes, but also about each other. In this fire journey, we can be an Uber, efficiently getting from Point A to Point B, or we can be like Lyndsey, waiting at the curb with a 15-passenger van and a huge smile, ready to go where fire takes us.
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