Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning of American West by Kelly Ramsey, 2025
Once she made the team, the hard work really starts. Despite her best efforts, she is one of the weakest and slowest on the crew of men, which frustrates her.
As the only female, she needs to handle having her period and finding a place to pee when the team is out in a flat field with no trees.
She starts to become part of the Hotshot crew as the team realizes her grit. She never gives up, volunteers to carry a heavier load and soon finds herself accepted by the team.
Intertwined with her troubled childhood growing up with an alcoholic father, Ramsey grows up as an insecure woman but finds solace in nature and her strength in challenging and pushing herself to become a Hotshot firefighter.
A good example of a picture is worth a thousand words, a diagram of the firefighting gear (Nomex yellow shirt & green pants) and tools (Pulaski ax, chainsaw, Fiver to carry five gallons of water) is included to provide a sense of the challenges of being a Hotshot firefighter.
