Good morning. As the light filters in this Thursday, my thoughts drift back to a profound emptiness that settled over me long ago – a time when it felt as though "everything and everyone" slipped through my grasp. It wasn't just a single event, though one searing day certainly stands as its stark monument. It was a gradual erosion, a relentless tide of goodbyes, a seismic shift that left the landscape of my life irrevocably changed.
It's June 26, 2025. Thirty-five years to the day. And once again, Arizona is burning.
The news reports fill the screen, the familiar reds and oranges on the fire maps, the stories of evacuations, the photos of smoke plumes reaching into the sky. The Oak Ridge Fire, growing on the Navajo Nation, forcing families from their homes. The Bridge Creek Fire, sparked by lightning, consuming thousands of acres near Navajo Mountain. Even the memory of the Greer Fire from last month still lingers. Each headline, each image, is a cruel echo, a vivid re-ignition of a profound loss I experienced on this very day, back in 1990.
Here is an image of fires currently burning on Navajo mountain in Arizona in 2025 with more flames:
Today, those memories are sharper than ever. I see the firefighters on the news, their faces grimed with ash, pushing through exhaustion, and my heart aches for them. I see the families evacuating, carrying what little they can, and I know their fear, their uncertainty, their profound sense of dislocation. I think of the animals, the deer and the bears and the countless smaller creatures, losing their homes, their lives, in the relentless march of the flames.
Thirty-five years later, the lessons of the Dude Fire still resonate. The fragility of our forests, the increasing intensity of wildfire seasons, the bravery of those who stand on the front lines, and the devastating, long-lasting impact on communities and individuals. My cabin, a precious piece of my family's heritage and my personal history is gone, but the memories, the profound loss, and the empathy for all those currently enduring the same nightmare, remain.
This anniversary, stirred by the new fires burning across Arizona, is not just a personal remembrance. It's a somber acknowledgment of a cyclical tragedy, a reminder that the wildlands we cherish are constantly under threat, and that the fight against fire, and the healing from its scars, continues, year after year. My thoughts are with everyone impacted by the current fires, and my hope is that the strength and resilience of Arizona will, once again, prevail.
Here's the link to You Tube on from Nov 7, 2016
This video tells the story of the 1990 Dude fire near Payson, Arizona. On June 26th six firefighters were entrapped and killed on this fire. At the time this was the largest wildfire in Arizona history. This video was produced by Phoenix News Channel 3.
I often speak of June 26, 1990, the day the Dude Fire swallowed my family's hunting cabin near the Mogollon Rim. I remember the smell of it, that cabin, the quiet solace it offered. I remember the desperate, futile fight, the searing heat, the choking smoke, the agonizing moment I had to turn and run as the fire swallowed everything I held dear in that place – a family legacy, a first home, a dream.
That cabin, built by my great-grandfather Ruban Hedges and my grandfather G.C. Hedges (George Clinton Hedges, who was born on this very day, June 26th, in 1909), was more than just a structure; it was a physical tether to generations, to childhood joys, to the very start of my married life with my high school sweetheart.
They constructed it around 1921, the same year Zane Grey built his famous cabin nearby, while they were working on new road constructions in the area.
Losing it wasn't just losing property; it was watching a piece of my heritage, my sanctuary, and my immediate future turn to ash. Yhe Dude Fire on June 26, 1990, engulfing a hunting cabin near the Mogollon Rim
But the profound loss I carry goes deeper. When the fire raged, it felt like the world itself was burning down. The raw power of it, the loss of wildlife, the unthinkable sacrifice of the Perryville crew – Sandra Bachman, Joseph Chacon, Alex Contreras, James Denney, James Ellis, and Curtis Springfield – it shook my sense of security, my understanding of order. In its wake, a different kind of void opened up.
"Everything" became a more abstract concept. It wasn't just the physical possessions gone in the blaze, but the very sense of stability, of belonging to a familiar world. The routines, the assumptions, the easy certainties of life before. They all felt consumed, leaving a strange, quiet desolation.
And "everyone"? That’s a harder truth to articulate, for it speaks to a series of heart-wrenching departures that followed. My beloved Grandfather G.C. Hedges passed on Christmas Day 1999. Then, my Grandmother in June of 2001. The deepest cut came in 2004, when I lost my wife to cancer. And just a year later, on his birthday, November 26th, 2005, we said goodbye to our precious 2-year-old son. The ground beneath me continued to crumble as my father left us on June 9th, 2009, and my mother on September 26th, 2011, just after her 73rd birthday on September 17th.
Each loss, a separate mountain of grief, piled one upon the other. It's not necessarily that these incredible people vanished from my life because of the fire, but rather that the fire was the first tremor in a long, devastating earthquake of loss that continued for over two decades. It created a chasm between my inner world and the outer one, changing my perspective and isolating me in a profound way. The comfortable familiarity of a social fabric that seemed, for a time, to unravel.
The weight of this cumulative grief, this continuous unraveling, has manifested profoundly within me. My diagnosis as a depressive with psychoses is the clinical truth of how this unending profound loss has etched itself into the very fabric of my being. It's an internal battle, fought in the quiet hours and sometimes in the stark light of day, a testament to the sheer magnitude of what the human spirit can endure when faced with such an overwhelming cascade of goodbyes.
It's the feeling of standing on a new, barren plain, looking back at a vibrant, green valley that no longer exists, and knowing you are fundamentally different because you walked through the flames and endured the subsequent storms.
Mornings like this, I reflect on how those experiences shaped me. The journey through such all-encompassing loss is a solitary one, even when surrounded by others. It teaches resilience, yes, but also a deep, often quiet, understanding of life's fragility. The landscapes of our past, both physical and emotional, can be utterly transformed. And sometimes, when "everything and everyone" is gone, what remains is the stark, beautiful truth of who you are, standing alone, ready to rebuild, even if the foundations are now just ash and memory.
Yours for Now Captain Hedges
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