Can I get an Opinion on this Forum

[higuys]

I am looking out over Mackey Bar, a small hamlet on the banks of the Salmon River in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness. It’s 3 am. The night air is warm and soft, the stars are out, but I can’t tell where the sky ends and land begins. I have been up for the last four days. The world around me is engulfed in flames. As part of the US Forest Service’s ______ Hotshots fire crew, which was assigned to protect this small enclave of civilization, I am thankful to be alive and able to take in the night air. As far as the world knows my fire crew is dead, engulfed by flame. For now we are floating in the limbo of isolation and confusion that accompanies major fires in the farthest reaches of the American West.
While in limbo I had a lot of time to think, since youth I have taken inspiration from nature. I walked along the banks of the Salmon and looked at the tall trees and rugged hills. Each tree was larger that itself. Alone a tree along these ridges would have been nothing more than a placeholder in the immensity of the wilderness. Together, as a forest, the tree fostered a verity of life, created climate and sustained an entire ecosystem. It was at this moment that I knew I wanted to be something bigger than myself. Even when the fire ripped through part of the forest and turned it to ash the rest of the forest continued to thrive and support life.
The river is still flowing, as it was two days earlier when flames ripped up an unnamed hill below where my fire crew was working. We ran in organized chaos down the lee side of the ridge and crashed into the cool waters of the Salmon. As I watched the flames lick up the hillside thoughts and images raced in my mind. The firefighters of the past who had been returned to the earth on unnamed hillsides across the West. The beauty of nature, My Grandfather who walked from Bagdad to Jerusalem, The vistas I’d seen. My boots were filling with water and I was moving before I realized it, not knowing I had just witnessed the fire that had killed me.
Isolation and confusion disperse outwards into the world, a bomb blast of which the epicenter is eerily quite and calm. The world slows. The ash muffles the scream and commands. The smoke becomes a perpetual haze, choking smell and blinding sight. Through this we move. Hands on shoulders, whispers in ears. We know what must be done. We may not win, but we will not lose. Slowly the sun and blue sky break the cloud of smoke. The world speeds up and we are reborn. As I walk though a world turned to ash my thoughts are of Frost stopped in the snowy wood.

[lawschool2014hopeful]

I dont quite understand the purpose of this.

From the beginning to the middle I thought okay, this is going somewhere, maybe you want to protect the environment.

Then I read your second half, what is this? I am confused, philosophical poetry? What are you trying to get across with this?

"The fire that killed me?"

?????

[tpfennin]

^I agree. Didn't really take anything away from this that gave me any idea about why you want to switch gears and go to law school. It reads fluidly, but way too many descriptive words IMO. You are not writing a poem. I think the style has to be more direct.

If you turn this into a "I want to use the law to protect the environment" piece it could probably be compelling, but this would most likely need to be completely rewritten to accomplish this goal.

[mach9zero]

What did I just read? Write a narrative.