Al Kyte's Life Take-Aways

   

I played baseball at the University of California, a commitment that required playing year-around, including the summer when I would rather have been working in the mountains.  After my senior year, I finally had one summer free to take a job with the U.S. Forest service.

On that job I was assigned to a forest station high in the Sierra on a crew created to do special projects for the district ranger, such as building campgrounds and maintaining back-country trails.  It was great.  I particularly loved working in the back country several days at a time and fishing on my off hours.  Three of us college kids worked for a man named Clyde Smith, an “older guy” in his early forties.  (I now look back at that age as being pretty young).   

But Clyde was not alone.  He had with him a constant companion, a dog named Buster.  At first glance there was nothing remarkable about Buster—a medium-sized, black, sort of non-descript dog.  We soon found that he was completely devoted to Clyde.  He barely tolerated the rest of us, not even welcoming our attention.  Yet, the few times Clyde reprimanded him, Buster would lower his head and look embarrassed.  That black dog seemed to turn a couple of shades of red.  I had never seen such a one-man dog nor have I since.  

My most memorable time with Buster started at the forest station one evening after dinner.  A radio message came in, informing us that a fire had been sighted by two lookouts.  The third lookout had not been able to see it, so we had only a general idea of its location.  That smoke was coming from an area our crew had built a trail through a few weeks before and we knew there was a lot of fallen timber nearby.  Given that familiarity, our crew was asked to hike in and try to find that fire and stop it before it could spread.  

This was our chance for the kind of excitement usually reserved for our fire crew.  Clyde, myself, another college kid, and Buster of course, piled into a jeep armed with tools—shovels, Polaskis, McClouds, and a chain saw.  Clyde drove that jeep as far as possible, even fording one creek.  Then we unloaded the tools and started hiking up the trail.

Several hours later, well after dark, we started to smell the smoke.  But Buster picked that moment to leave the trail, run into the woods, and start barking.  Clyde called him back, but Buster wouldn’t come.  I had never known Buster to ignore Clyde’s call.  Clyde said, “I’ll bet that dog has treed an animal.”  We had no choice but to go in after him.  When we caught up with him, we saw why Buster had not come back.  He had found the fire he seemed to know we were looking for.  We were about to walk right past it.  We put a perimeter around the fire and worked our way inward to get it under control.  By morning, when the fire crew relieved us, all that was left for them was the less glorious “mopping up” work.  Thanks to Buster, we had a moment as the fire-station heroes.

But that wasn’t the last I heard of Buster.  Shortly after returning to school in September, I received a letter from Clyde.  He had apparently been hiking up a trail when a rattlesnake struck at him and hooked its fangs on the cuff of his jeans.  He said he was ‘doing a jig’ trying unsuccessfully to dislodge that snake, when Buster ran up, grabbed the snake in his mouth, and shook it from side to side until it flew from Clyde’s pants.  How can a dog come to have such character?