9/11: What Does It All Mean?
The morning of September 11, 2001, I was in a cabin on Isle Royale, Mich., getting ready for work as an interpretive park ranger, after having just come off of a three-week-long forest firefighting stint in the Okanogan National Forest in northeastern Washington State.
It was nearly time for me to hike a mile or so to work at the Isle Royale National Park Ranger Station at Rock Harbor, as the cabin I shared with two other rangers was only accessible by boat or by foot. As I dressed I had the radio on for really no good reason, for up until September it hadn't been a habit to listen to the news. But, after spending nearly a month with 19 men as part of a 20-person federal firefighting crew, I suppose I had become accustomed to a lot of background noise.
The summer of 2001 was a bad fire season out west. Not far from where I was stationed in Washington four firefighters lost their lives just one month earlier in the Thirty Mile Fire, when flames blew up and blocked the only escape route available to a five-person fire squad. That fire was so hot it entirely melted a pickup truck.
Our fire, the Virginia Lake Complex, had encompassed more than 74,000 acres, was partially located on the Colville Indian Reservation, and required the assistance of helicopters, planes, tankers and other equipment, and more than 1,600 firefighting personnel. The crew and squad I was a part of worked alongside “hot shot” professionals on a two-day bivouac in the deep, mountainous Washington woods, as well as with soldiers from the Fort Lewis, Wash. U.S. Army base. It was a big fire that involved a lot of people.
After fire duty, upon flying over Isle Royale in a float plane from Sky Harbor in Duluth (the same way I left the island), I remember it being very quiet. It was the latter part of the season, so the boats and float planes that brought people to Isle Royale from Grand Marais, Minn., and the Keeweenaw Peninsula of Michigan weren't always filled to capacity.
Part of being a ranger required me to carry a hand-held radio to communicate with my co-workers across Isle Royale, as there were few telephones. The morning of Sept. 11 I remember being in the last-minute process of putting on the badge indicating I was a park ranger when simultaneously I heard on the commercial radio a breaking news report about the first of the two towers being hit in New York, and my call number “204” on the hand-held being recited by the Rock Harbor law enforcement ranger, Bill.
Bill had a television and invited me, and others, to come by before work to see the visual reports of the incident in New York. By the time I walked the mile to Rock Harbor where Bill lived and where I worked, the second tower had been hit and we heard reports of firefighters killed in the line of duty.
The best word to describe the rest of the day would be “surreal.” I greeted relaxed campers and hikers coming off the trail to Rock Harbor with news that they would not be able to return to the mainland until we received notice from the federal government to allow boats and planes to go back and forth between the island and the mainland, as they had been grounded in case of any attempts of terrorists to cross from Canada to the U.S. Those of us wearing National Park Service badges placed a black strip of tape over the top in memory of lives lost in New York. We dropped the flag to half-staff. Bill opened his house for hikers to view the news, and my roommates and I opened our house up for a potluck dinner, given that many stranded campers had not planned extra meals to accommodate the delay on the island.
Eventually, we all calmed down, but I kept imagining the firefighters in the World Trade Center, blocked from escape due to heavy smoke and flame, mimicking the predicament of the Thirty Mile Fire squad earlier in the summer. I thought about how 1,600 emergency personnel were called on for a 74,000-acre fire, with many more than that being called to New York City to assist in clean up and rescue efforts. It was overwhelming.
About a month passed by, and though my time on Isle Royale ended and I had returned to Bayfield, my thinking about Sept. 11 continued. I just couldn't understand. What does this all mean?, I kept asking myself.
Finally, I wrote a letter to the editor that ran in regional Chequamegon Bay publications in October 2001. It was cheeky at the time, as I questioned the guidance then-President George W. Bush gave to the baffled and shocked American citizenry. Spending? Praying? With him or against? His answers seemed overly simplified given the magnitude of what had occurred. People wrote thank you notes to me, but I remained mystified that we were told to carry on, as though nothing needed to change.
In preparing for writing this short essay I tracked down the letter and reprint it below in its entirety. Upon re-reading it, 10 years later, it still seems to speak to the issues facing us today.
Following Sept. 11 We Need To Focus
To the editor:
On September 11, 2001, the life of our nation was altered forever. A pinch of paranoia sprinkled over investors and travelers – we are feeling the reverberations of the tragedies here on the Bayfield Peninsula. We are at war.
What is happening? We ask ourselves. What does this mean?
President George W. Bush addressed Congress and the American people after the attack, telling us how our nation plans to respond to these terrorist acts. And, we have already begun to initiate our response through bombing.
Bush also told us the al Qaeda terrorist organization is responsible for the events that took place in New York and Washington, D.C. The organization hates us, Bush explained, because of our freedoms, our democratic government, and our way of life. And, while our nation begins what will inevitably become a lengthy war against terrorism, our government expects us to live our American lives as we always have, to value what it means to be an American, to be patient, to spend, and to pray.
It is true that what happened on September 11th was evil and wrong. Lives were lost. But, if we take steps away from the death, the politics, the anger, we can attempt to question what it means to live an American life. In some strange way we have been given an opportunity to look inward and to reevaluate who we are, what we stand for, and how we live.
Already, there have been noticeable changes in public media interest. We are no longer drawn to our televisions to learn about the bed-buddies of our politicians – we are drawn to information to learn about the truths of our country and our fellow citizens.
This flip of American consciousness from one of gossip to one of compassion is refreshing. It is also a challenge. For by re-examining the events in our lives we have become actively introspective.
If we can re-acquaint ourselves with who we are, what we stand for, and what we care about, we can truly protect our American dream. Our character is at stake along with our freedoms in this time of transition and uncertainty. Let's focus on what we believe in, strive for positive change, and live simple and peaceful lives.
Sincerely,
Claudia Curran
Bayfield