# @mysteryranch on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/COMFfaBpTmP
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/18297103-mysteryranch-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/ff821c1995.jpg
- **Posted:** 2021-04-28T00:03:51.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** MYSTERY RANCH (@mysteryranch) — https://gondola.cc/mysteryranch

## Caption

BACKBONE CONTRIBUTOR - JONATHAN PAPICH

"This career is not about recognition, or accolades, or parades, or making a lot of money because, let's be honest, absolutely none of those things will come to fruition even if they were the motivating factor." - Jonathan Papich. 

Jonathan is a Lead Forestry Technician on a Type 1 Interagency Hotshot Crew. He's currently in his seventh season working for the U.S. Forest Service as a member of a Hotshot Crew.

Hotshotting is all Jonathan knows of the wildland fire community. When he first started fighting fire, he was about as inexperienced as is humanely possible, which was only magnified more by the fact that he was beginning my career with the best of the best on a Hotshot Crew.

"Most of my memories of that first season are just a blur – a blur of exhaustion, pain, and hard work.

In addition to the blur, I had no concept about the quality of my performance other than my desire to somehow work as hard as the Herculean Hotshots to the right and left of me.
But towards the end of that first season, during a particularly long and strenuous shift on the infamously rugged Salmon-Challis National Forest in Idaho, a hard-nosed supervisor I greatly admired looked at me as if he was peering into my soul and deadpanned, "Papich… you're a Hotshot." With that statement, with that recognition, his stare returned to the task at hand, and we continued laboriously digging fireline. To this day, seven fire seasons and countless backbreaking shifts on the fireline later, it is the only recognition that matters to me and one I've had the honor of passing onto others in the years since, from a fellow Hotshot for being a Hotshot."

Read more about Jonathan's link in bio ^^
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#builtforthemission #backboneseries #fire #wildlandfire #theanchorpointpodcast #mysteryranch #crew #wildlandfirefighter #wildfire #firefighters #fueledbynature #firetechnician #lifeontheline #1039 #forestrytech #operator #leaders #leadfromthefront

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## Tags

wildlandfire, backboneseries, firefighters, wildlandfirefighter, operator, forestrytech, fire, mysteryranch, builtforthemission, lifeontheline, leaders, crew, wildfire, firetechnician, theanchorpointpodcast, leadfromthefront, fueledbynature, 1039

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