Death of a Scientist

Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire is an unfinished nonfiction book devoted to the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in the woods of Montana, in which 13 of the firefighters who had parachuted in to fight it died. Maclean spent decades returning over and over again to the event, revisiting the site, interviewing survivors, and debating with scientists.

As the editor of the posthumously published edition, Alan Thomas, explained, Maclean struggled with the technicalities of fire science, and those difficulties were part of the reason he never finished the book. ...It clearly isn’t a masterpiece on the same level as his famous novella, A River Runs Through It, but it still stuck with me long after I finished.

I think that’s because there was another book that was taking shape inside the draft, and Maclean did not live long enough to complete the transformation. This other book would have been not a conventional piece of science journalism but a personal meditation on mortality and his own search for meaning: more “Old Men and Death” than “Young Men and Fire.”

I started to figure this out about the halfway point, where there’s a powerful scene where you can feel the book shifting from the determinedly factual into something else. It recounts the last day in the life of Harry Gisborne, a Forest Service scientist who was investigating the Mann Gulch fire. There’s a lot of wisdom here:

To Gisborne, science started and ended in observation, and theory should always be endangered by it. … He said to [Bob] Jansson: “I’m glad I got a chance to get up here. Tomorrow we can get all our dope together and work on Hypothesis Number One. Maybe it will lead to a theory.” This was at rest stop 35. By now the rest stops were becoming stations of the cross.

They were following a game trail along the cliffs high above the Missouri River at the lower end of the Gates of the Mountains, and were only a quarter or a half mile from their truck when they reached stop 37. Gisborne sat down on a rock and said: “Here’s a nice place to sit and watch the river. I made it good. My legs might ache a little, though, tomorrow.”

In his report, Jansson says: “I think Gisborne’s rising at point 37 on the map was due to the attack hitting him.” He goes on to explain in parenthesis that “thrombosis cases usually want to stand or sit up because of difficulty in breathing.” Gisborne died within a minute, and Jansson piled rocks around him so he would not fall off the game trail into the Missouri River a hundred feet below.

When Jansson knew Gisborne was dead, he stretched him out straight on the game trail, built the rocks around him higher, closed his eyes, and then put his glasses back on hi so, just in case he woke up, he could see where he was.

Then Jansson ran for help. The stars came out. Nothing moved on the game trail. The great Missouri passing below repeated the same succession of chords it probably will play for a million years to come. The only other motion was the moon floating across the lenses of Gisborne’s glasses, which at last were unobservant.

This is the death of a scientist, a scientist who did much to establish a science. On the day of his death he had the pleasure of discovering that his theory about the Mann Gulch blowup was wrong. It would be revealing if tomorrow had come and he had got all his dope together and had worked out a new Hypothesis Number One. Maybe it would have led to another theory, probably the right one.

In any case, because of him we have been able to form what is likely the correct theory. Gisborne’s portrait hangs on the staircase of the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory in Missoula, which immediately adjoins the Smokejumper base. He looks you square in the eye but is half amused as if he had caught you too attached to one of your theories, or one of his. …

For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us–excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over, get our new dope together, and find a Hypothesis Number One all over again. And being basically on the right track when we were wrong.

This was on November 9, 1949; Gisborne was only 56 years old.

by Andrew Batson, The Tangled Woof |  Read more:

Image: Young Men and Fire