Welcome to Durable Good.
Today I’m going to revisit an earlier post, something I wrote and published on Durable Good in July of 2025. It is titled Rescue 10, and it’s about my experience as a volunteer firefighter and being new to volunteer firefighting in our small town, and my observations about the relationships and the things that volunteer firefighters do for their communities. Many of you asked that I turn it into an audio publication, so I’m getting around to doing that here. Thanks so much for those requests and for the encouragement. It means a great deal. So here you go. An audio version of Rescue 10, originally published on Durable Good on July 3, 2025. I hope you enjoy.
Rescue 10
on volunteering at the local fire department…
The first thing I noticed was the smell: a dense, lived-in mix of canvas and rubber; ash and diesel; sweat and grease. The fire trucks gleamed like chrome giants, polished to parade condition, but no polish could erase the lingering scent of combustion and burden. They smelled like they remembered where they’ve been.
There hasn’t been formal training yet - no drills, no certifications. That’s all coming. For now, I’ve been watching, listening, learning. Trying to absorb the code, the cadence, the logic that governs this place. There’s a choreography to it all: tools with names like halligan and pike pole; compartments that open like advent calendars of precision; protocols that must be memorized not just to pass a test but to save a life. Everything in its place. Everything with a purpose.
What surprised me most wasn’t how few volunteers there were, but how many. In this town, people don’t just wave flags or post hashtags. They tend to show up. They sweat. They serve. The firehouse lineup spans generations: teenagers still figuring out their place in the world; retirees who could have put their boots up but didn’t; and everyone in between - welders, mechanics, nurses, night-shift workers. No one boasts. No one slouches. Everyone brings something. Everyone carries weight.
Earlier this summer, I responded to my first fire. It was a single-story home, burning heavily by the time we arrived. Thick gray smoke poured from beneath the eaves, rushing out in dense, pressurized waves, as if the house itself were exhaling through every crack in its frame.
What I saw wasn’t panic. It was a kind of kinetic calm. Trucks from neighboring towns pulled up in steady rhythm. Crews moved with practiced ease, snapping on masks, checking gauges, laying out hose lines that pulsed like arteries along the gravel driveway. One team entered. Another stood ready to take their place. Each movement was composed. Even as the roof threatened to cave, there was humor—not the gallows kind, but something grounded. A shared language visible from behind face shields, traded over radios. Self-deprecating. Understated. Calming.
I joined the department because I wanted to continue my work in public service closer to home. To understand service not as policy or posture, but as presence. I’ve spent a life in foreign assistance overseas, circling the edges of catastrophe in fractured societies where daily life holds together by the thinnest threads of will and habit. And what I’ve learned is that the stories that endure and change lives rarely involve grand speeches.
They involve a mother walking miles to find clean water for her children; a nurse moving from tent to tent in a refugee camp, tending to wounds that medicine alone can’t heal; a local elder who coordinates food distributions under curfew, aware that every delivery carries risk; a teenager using his phone - his only tool - to help reunite families scattered by violence. Quiet acts of courage that don’t seek recognition. Just survival, dignity wherever it can be found, and care.
This firehouse feels familiar in that way. The stakes are different. The scale is smaller. But the instinct is the same. People stepping forward because someone has to. Not for glory. Not for credit. But because the pager buzzed, and that means it’s time to go.
Last month, a new rescue truck arrived at the station. Rescue 7, its predecessor, had nearly three decades of service in its rearview. Fire trucks aren’t built for eternity.
There’s a tradition of pushing a new rig into the firehouse by hand—a ritual that dates back to the days of horse-drawn engines. Today, it’s a collective gesture of unity and transition, honoring what came before. Fifteen of us gathered at the bumper. No orders. No speeches. Just a collective shoulder to the metal. Then Rescue 10 sat quietly in its place—gleaming, heavy, ready. We lingered. Not quite celebrating, not quite leaving. Just standing in the half-light, thinking about where we’ll be when the next truck arrives, and who’ll be there then, leaning in.
It’s just one example of what public service is—less slogan than reflex. A kind of civic muscle memory that kicks in when something needs doing. It’s how communities keep going—through storms and shortages, wildfires and wars, uncertainty and upheaval. Especially when it’s hard, and when no one is looking.
There are stories like this everywhere. Maybe even yours.
Let’s tell them.
