Great to meet Roger Bergmann for breakfast at The Range in Bernalillo today, 50-some years after our Inyo Ecology Center days In California, where we learned the food was better in fire camps and spike camps than our mess hall 10 miles north of Bishop. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing the cheerful, Montana-raised Crew 1 leader, who was on his way to the rodeo in Santa Fe.
Looking at this photo, I also remembered that we were forbidden by our employers, the California Division of Forestry, from wearing beards, long hair and, I think, even mustaches back in 1971-73. We were told they were “fire hazards.”
Maybe yes, maybe no.
And cheers to old friends Chet Baker and Robert Elliott, who Roger said he sees semi-regularly in Bishop, Bob Heberle and Matt Stothart, who remembers that Roger was the first person he met upon arriving at our 80-man Ecology Center barracks in the early 1970s.
dream ranch 