Back to StoriesDaring to Leap: Meet Paris Harris
September 10, 2024
Daring to Leap: Meet Paris HarrisOne Chicago woman is digging a new line to become America’s first Black female smokejumper
Paris Harris lays down prescribed fire during a spring break internship in Florida last March. Photo courtesy LaVell Rucker
by Keely Larson
It was peaceful
from the bench outside of the Deary, Idaho fire station just after the Fourth
of July. Birds were calling and answering, and Potato Hill, colloquially
called “Spud,” rose in the distance. Deary has a population around 500, quite a change from the
southern suburbs of Chicago where Paris Harris grew up.
Harris had
never been to Idaho, nor had she been in a car for 27 straight hours, which was
how long it took her and her father to drive from their home in Calumet Park,
Illinois. The trip was a big deal for Harris in the summer of 2023. After all,
she was about to enter her first year at the University of Idaho.
“Being in
the city your whole life, you just feel trapped,” said Harris, now 19 and
starting her sophomore year at U of I. “But when you go out here you see things
you’ve never seen before like all these different types of trees and mountains
… it’s very beautiful.”
Harris
came to the Gem State not only for the views but also with a mission: to become
the first Black female smokejumper in America. She knew the journey, like the
drive, would be a long road.
African American men
and women have worked for land management agencies since the beginning of the
20th century, but the racism they encountered commonly cut short
careers and made these places difficult to stay long enough to effect change.
Ralph
Brock became the country’s first Black forester in 1906—just one year after the
U.S. Forest Service was established—but after the “relentless racism” he faced from white students at
Pennsylvania’s State Forest Academy, he left forestry
a few years later. Melody Mobley launched her career as the first Black
female forester for the Forest Service in 1977 and retired 28 years later,
after enduring unthinkable indignity, including rape, which she wrote about for Mountain
Journal in 2018. Today, Randy Moore is the first Black American chief of
the Forest Service, appointed in 2021.
Paris Harris’s father, LaVell Rucker, describes her as a “girly-girl.” She doesn’t totally agree with that distinction but does like how this star on her nose complemented her “yellows,” or how wildland firefighters refer to their yellow brush shirts. Photo courtesy LaVell Rucker
As climate
changes and wildfire seasons get longer and hotter, experts across the fire
field agree that diversity is crucial to understanding how to adapt in the
years to come.
Within all firefighting agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Parks Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, women make up just 12 percent.
Harris
would be a new “first” if she takes her inaugural leap out of a plane as a
member of firefighting’s most elite force. She spent this summer fighting wildfires
on an engine crew with the Idaho Department of Lands, during which she reported
to 15 fires, working the engine and digging fireline. As of early September, according
to the National Interagency Wildfire Center, 1,088 fires in Idaho had burned more
than 750,000 acres so far this year.
Harris is
still grappling with all the firsts. “I feel like I am making my mark in
history, but I don’t know,” she said.
***
On the
shorter side at five feet, three inches and petite, Harris may not have the
stature of some firefighters, but she makes up for it with perseverance. She had
an interest in fighting fire from an early age. She grew up in a house down the
street from the fire station in Calumet Park, which allowed her to see the
action as fire trucks drove in and out of the apparatus bays. The station
hosted a fire academy for kids every summer and Harris began attending at age 12.
Howard
Fisher was fire chief in Calumet Park when Harris was taking academy classes. He
remembers her being more devoted to the activities than other girls: donning
the equipment, handling fire hose, crawling through a maze in the dark. And she
asked some big questions.
If she were
to pursue firefighting, a young Harris asked, would it be hard if she’s the
only female firefighter at the station? It depends on how you look at it,
Fisher replied. “Where you have a female climbing the ladder, proving that
she’s capable of doing the same job as males, that’s huge because a lot of
women would be discouraged,” he told Mountain Journal.
When LaVell Rucker, Harris’s dad, started to research smokejumping, he cried. He recalls telling his daughter that you’re not supposed to jump into a fire,
you’re supposed to run from it.
“We
thought [she] was just going through a phase,” Rucker said. “When she talked
about smokejumping, I had never heard of it before because we don’t have that
type of thing here in Chicago.”
But
smokejumpers are the cream of the crop in the firefighting world, and that’s
what Harris was after. It shook Rucker that she wanted to go all the way to
Idaho—and crushed him that she couldn’t come home for the summer—but that
didn’t stop him from driving her there.
“Me and my
dad, we both sat together, and we both watched YouTube videos, documentaries
and stories about smokejumping and I was like, you know what? I want to do
this, even though it may sound scary to other people,” Harris said. “I’m
looking for the thrill.”
***
Smokejumping
is no joke.
As of late
July, the Forest Service reported employing more than 11,000 wildland
firefighters. But across the nine jump bases in the country, there are only 320 smokejumpers.
Ted
McClanahan lives in Big Sky, Montana, and retired from smokejumping in 2017
after 24 years on the job. When he started, he saw it as a means to finance his
skiing.
“I always
thought it was the most fun thing I’ve ever done,” said McClanahan, who entered
the fire world following four years as a paratrooper in the Army.
The path
to becoming a smokejumper requires jumping through administrative hoops. A hopeful
candidate needs either two years on a fire crew—engine work, hotshot experience,
for example—or one year with a related degree, like something Harris is
pursuing. McClanahan says when he was jumping, somewhere between 1,500 and
3,000 applicants were competing for 14 jobs. And that was just within Region 1,
which includes bases in Grangeville, Idaho—close to Harris—and Missoula and
West Yellowstone in Montana. As training intensified, often just eight of the
14 jumpers remained.
“We thought [she] was just going through a phase. When she talked about smokejumping, I had never heard of it before because we don’t have that type of thing here in Chicago.” – LaVell Rucker, Paris Harris's father
Rookie
training lasts about six weeks and starts with the basics. First, you must be
between 5 feet and 6-foot-5-inches tall. Minimum requirements set by the Forest Service include
pullups, sit ups and a mile-and-a-half run, and progress to a pack test where rookies
must run with 85-pound fire packs over terrain gaining 1,000 feet in elevation.
Other elements of rookie training include tree climbing, land navigation and
eventually the jump phase where rookies begin jumping out of airplanes.
As
difficult as the physical challenges are for rookies in training, McClanahan
says the mental challenges are just as hard. “You’re building your stress
tolerance because a lot of the things we’re doing are as simple as tying your
shoes. But if you don’t do it correctly,” he said, “things don’t work out.”
The
University of Idaho is renowned for its wildland fire education and research. Harris
says her professors and job experience this summer are preparing her well. She
isn’t worried about the physical requirements, confident in her track and field
background, and believes she’ll grow stronger physically and mentally on her
path toward becoming a smokejumper.
“I felt a
kind of change in myself,” Harris said, “but in a good way; better than I was
back at home when I didn’t have a lot of confidence … I have more discipline
now since I’m on my own and I’m advocating for myself.”
***
Paris Harris stands atop Potato Hill, colloquially called Spud Hill, north of Deary, Idaho after her first hike. Photo courtesy LaVell Rucker
Her first
year in college wasn’t easy. There were the typical challenges: being far from
home, trying to find a new friend group, and the disappointment of not making
the university’s track and field team. But on top of that, when she sat down in
her wildland fire management class she didn’t see a single other Black woman.
“I was
kind of shocked,” she said. “My dad, he was like, ‘Well you’ve got to expect
this. You’re at U of I.’”
Harris’s neighborhood
on the South Side of Chicago has fewer people than Moscow, Idaho, home of the
University of Idaho. But Calumet Park, with just over 7,000 residents, is 89
percent Black as of the 2020 Census. Of the 28,596 people who live in Moscow, just
315 are African American.
“Regardless of your sex, your race, everybody deserves a chance. So if you can do the job, then you can do the job.” – Randy Brooks, forestry professor, University of Idaho
Heather
Heward, who taught Harris’s wildland fire management class, said it was the
first time in her 12 years of teaching the course that a Black woman had taken
it. “She saw a gap and she saw a space within this field that has not been
filled by someone like her,” Heward said. “As a competitive person, she sees
that as a bit of a challenge.”
The first female smokejumper, Deanne Shulman, made history in 1979 in McCall, Idaho, where
many smokejumpers go to train. Smokejumping is still a male-dominated field,
but Heward says Shulman paved the way for more women to shoulder the chute.
According
to an article published in The Hill in 2021, only about 12 of the 400
smokejumpers at the time were women. In 2018, the International
Association of Wildland Fire reported
that within all firefighting agencies, including the Forest Service, Bureau of
Land Management, National Parks Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, women made up just 12 percent.
Diversifying
the workforce comes incrementally, Heward says. She compares it to track and
field at the Olympics: A world record can be shattered if athletes push the
bounds of what’s possible. In doing so they show others a path.
***
When she
took the position with the U.S. Forest Service, Melody Mobley didn’t think
about being the first Black female forester. It was just the job she wanted. At
first, she didn’t even know she was first.
“To find
out two or three years in that I was the first Black female forester, it was
shocking to me,” Mobley said. “I thought, ‘Here we are in the ‘70s and there
aren’t any other people like me? In the whole agency?’”
Being
first came with assumptions, namely that she couldn’t compete with her white male
colleagues. She described being constantly tested. Colleagues asked where she
went to school, what classes she took, what grades she earned, if she had any
fieldwork experience. She didn’t notice other foresters being asked those
questions.
In 2021, Mobley wrote a second
article for Mountain Journal
outlining ways the Forest Service could better support people of color, which included
multicultural training, inclusion from the top down, and mentorship. On a phone
call in early May, Mobley gave Harris two key pieces of advice: First, find a
mentor. Second, always document inappropriate behavior and keep it safely
stored off work property.
Harris
listened. She began creating a support system in Idaho, and the first person who
was integral to that system was Randy Brooks.
Brooks, a
forestry professor at U of I, did what all parents want from the college
application process: he picked up the phone. Assuring Harris’s dad that he was committed
to his fire students, he said that part of his process is asking freshmen what
they want. Harris told him she wanted to be the first Black female smokejumper.
Brooks said, “OK, let’s figure out how to get you there.”
As climate changes and wildfire seasons get longer and hotter, experts across the fire field agree that diversity is crucial to understanding how to adapt in the years to come.
Brooks
describes Harris as a hard worker with guts and determination. She’ll need to
finish her degree and have several seasons of working in wildland fire before
she can start smokejumping, perhaps as early as 2028, but he wants her to get
there.
“Regardless
of your sex, your race, everybody deserves a chance. So if you can do the job,
then you can do the job,” Brooks said.
That job
is changing for reasons beyond race and gender. And it won’t look the same when
Harris is ready to jump her first fire. Climate change is causing temperatures
across the American West to increase, along with drought, and snowpacks are
melting earlier in spring causing vegetation to dry out faster. It’s a recipe
for longer, more extreme wildfire seasons.
But those
across the field of wildfire see diversity as one way to tackle the challenges
ahead.
“The
issues that we’re facing today are the most complex issues we’ve ever had to
face,” Mobley said. “In order to get the best solutions and alternatives we
really need the brightest minds from the world … to address things like global
climate change, wildland fires that are like nothing we’ve ever seen … We need
everybody not only to just have a seat at the table but to be given a voice to
speak and be heard.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mountain Journal is a nonprofit, public-interest journalism organization dedicated to covering the wildlife and wild lands of Greater Yellowstone. We take pride in our work, yet to keep bold, independent journalism free, we need your support. Please donate here. Thank you.
Related Stories
December 14, 2023
New Research Suggests Montana FWP Wolf Count High
Bozeman-based researcher says agency's model for counting wolves is wrong. FWP disagrees citing a lack of peer review.
June 14, 2024
Are Toxic Agrichemicals Forcing Rapid Evolution in Yellowstone Elk?
New
research suggests hazardous chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers used in
farming, more so than wolves, contributed to a decline in Greater Yellowstone...
December 22, 2023
Where the Rudder Meets the Road
In his
new book, Crossings, author Ben Goldfarb charts a course through the
complicated intersection of roads and ecology.