I stand surrounded by a forest engulfed in flames. The roar is so loud I cannot even hear the propellers of the helicopter right above my head. Alexi runs to me and unhooks the rope clamped on my harness. He tugs it twice and the helicopter ascends above the treetops and disappears. All around me are the Avialesookhrana - Russian fire fighters who parachute or repel into the middle of a wildfire and fight it from within.

We set to work at once; with shovels and fresh boughs they beat out the flames and dig trenches. I raise my camera to my eye and start peeling off photographs.

Nickoli walks through the flames to hand me a smoke. I yell at him in Russian that I have no matches. He stops stomping a spreading patch of flames, shows me his gold teeth, bellows laughter. It is a rough crackling sound, like wood splintering.  I hold my camera and light the cigarette off a burning sapling. It tastes harsher than the smoke from the burning forest around us. Nickoli chains smokes these loose filterless cigarettes, so I hand the Prima over to his outstretched fingers.

After the fire has been slowed, the twelve men leave it to burn itself out. One has received minor burns on his leg and sits wrapping it in gauzes. Others stand and share a flask of homemade vodka. The ground beneath my feet smolders and trails of smoke fill my nose. The air around me is hazy and the sunlight punching through the canopy creates streaming rays so thick they seem touchable. I see Alexi still digging a trench around a huge Norway spruce that stands taller than any other. The bottom of the tree has been licked with flames, but it remains alive. I snap off a picture of Alexi reaching above the fire line to put his palm on the fresh bark.

We build camp in a field. The grass and weeds are short and new. I pitch my tent, it looks like something left over from WWII. Most of the men are at the stream, catching dinner. Alexi comes over to show me his boots, he also holds up Nickoli’s. Both have the rubber soles melted down to where it meets the leather. Alexi curses them in English and tosses Nickoli’s boots into the woods.

There is no darkness at night. The light from the burning forests reaches into the thickest brush. The fire fighters sleep in their clothes.

I talk to Alexi for a few minutes. We are both drunk. He told me about joining the Avialesookhrana with his father when he was fifteen, about doing it for thirty years before becoming chief and getting a raise. I asked about the money, if he got paid more for being the boss. He spoke so close to my face so I could smell the vodka.

“I send all the money home to my family for food. I have no use for rubles. I am out here because they are.” And he points to the sleeping figures that lie just under a cloud of smoke.

“They are my brothers,” he says in Russian. He is looking east at the orange light, not speaking to me anymore.

In the morning we leave in a rush. The helicopter pilot tells Alexi a brushfire has reignited from last week. The campfire behind us is left smoldering. He will fly the others out, and then return me to Norilsk. They should hike to the riverbank were he will meet them in two days.

As the helicopter hovers over the flames, I can feel the heat coming up through the bottom of the Mi-8. Alexi informs me that it is only his crew of twelve working on the 120-acre fire. At first I mistake his tone for fear, but his eyes show only excitement, I realize he is bragging.

Alexi checks each jumper’s parachute, gives him a shot of vodka and claps him on the shoulder. Each man leaps from the helicopter into a mouth made of flames with a tongue licking upwards.

Ignoring the superstition of going last, Alexi pushes past me and leaps through the doorway into the air, following his brothers into the fire.