Book captures wilderness firefighters' tales

SANDPOINT — Rich Faletto spent 20 years in the Air Force, and another two decades in the real estate industry.

Mountains, sky, and a few reminders surround his home in rural Sagle.

The vines, and rough-cut beams remind him of another life built like a brick, and tempered in the heat of four fire seasons in the wild country of central Washington.

It is where Faletto grew up. Where his father had a vineyard, and where he often hiked the rocky trails to the rustic outposts overlooking the diamond blue of Lake Chelan.

As a college student enrolled at Washington State University, Faletto and others like him paused at the view before hiking further into the outback to rustic camps where young men spent summers, living off their wits and waiting for blow ups.

The memories of the days in the early 1960s living in the wilderness of Wenatchee National Forest’s Chelan Ranger District are documented in Faletto’s recently published “Four-Eleven! Pulaskis, Planes & Forest Fires.”

The book Faletto said is not only a memoir of four fire seasons in some of the roughest country in the nation, it is also a tribute to fellow fire fighters, trail crew members and pilots whose mission was to quench burns.

Some of them busted their humps trying, others did not return from the ash.

“Those people lost their lives on fires,” Faletto said. “I wanted to dedicate the book to their memory and call attention to them.”

In addition, the book is a historical account of the men and methods used to battle burns in a changing environment of policy and procedures.

From heli-attack and smoke jumping, to the onset of dropping retardant on fires from planes, Faletto learned the development first-hand.

He started his seasonal employment on a trail crew, graduating to pilot duty in his fourth summer.

“It is difficult to explain the feelings that kept me coming back to work for the Forest Service summer after summer,” Faletto writes.

The end result, he said,, was that he “knew the area in the Chelan district like the back of (his) hand.”

Three of his co-workers spent 30 or more years with the agency.

Others, like Faletto, used the experience elsewhere, but always returned to it in their stories and memory.

Forest Service historians have lauded Faletto’s book as a pivotal piece that has not been documented until now.

To Faletto it was necessary to record the happenings of four summers in the mountains as sort of a handshake with history.

“Four Eleven!” is a nod to the people who walked and flew through a piece of time and place a long while back.

“To me it was a privilege to be a season employee for the Forest Service,” Faletto said. “And a great experience.”

A book signing is scheduled July 8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Vanderford’s Books.