Fires on the plains are not the roaring, mosaic burns in the mountains that leap across canyons and leave the skeletons of trees behind as monuments of destruction.

In this country, the first gust of wind hits like a left hook and gets the attention of everyone. The weatherman smiles and talks about precipitation chances and snow chances in percentages calculated via some formula with an understandable margin of error. But when they say the wind will blow, they’re never wrong.

Tractors hitched to giant discs sit parked near farm shops, and pickups with water tanks sit near wells that can pump hundreds of gallons per minute. The wind makes the bases of men’s skulls hurt, and makes broad-shouldered men flinch as dirt and tumbleweeds punish everything outside.

The cows, many this time of year with calf at side or heavy bred, hunker low and curl their big bodies small all while blown dirt drifts at their side. They take cover on the right sides of windbreaks with dirt streaking their great faces making trails from the inside corners of their eyes and their long lashes. Water tanks seem to throb as the wind pulses the water and a thin layer of dirt clings to any remaining chunks of broken ice. It makes for a miserable day on the sagebrush sea.

At the first whiff of smoke, scanners are turned up and neighbors begin calling one another. “Is it south of you?” “Did it get into the stubble?” Different materials smell and look different as they go up in smoke. Hay burns white and smells distinctly different than pasture. There is no amount of water that will extinguish a hay fire. Men in the heavy equipment they expertly pilot rush to move nearby unaffected bales, while others tear open the smoldering 2,000-pound bales to allow them to burn out.

County employees who know every road on the grids that cover the county are sent to close highways made invisible by smoke. Other roads are pummeled with the kind of blowing dust that made pioneers lose their minds nearly 100 years ago that still sifts under doors and into light switches.

People rush toward flames and rush toward their neighbors. They haul water in trailers that are baffled so they don’t slosh, but at highway speeds flying down a gravel road, they’re numb to the slaps and waves from wind and water alike.

Men throw giant tractors into road gear and go. They all know where the green wheat and paved roads are where, if they can rip fire lines and stay on the right side of trouble, they can herd the flames to things that won’t burn. If there are cattle in the path of the fire, fences are cut or gates are tied back to allow cattle to instinctively save themselves. The dust pneumonia and other respiratory wrecks can and will be dealt with later.

Volunteer fire departments stage their attacks while gathered in wide spots in the road. They’ve attended trainings, but most of them learned in grandpa’s pickup cab as he gave orders over a squawking cab radio to avoid a draw or a cedar shelter belt, or where irrigation wells are located and how to fill tender trucks from the fat hose openings. They know who has discs that unfold with hydraulics so strong they could lift the national debt. They know which neighbor moved out to the country looking to find themselves or hide from traffic and truancy officers who have never sprayed a weed and are sitting atop a timber box with nothing but a garden hose.

Men can squint down county roads and tell the farm by the little stand of trees or the leg of a grain bin interrupts the flow of the short grass sea. At morning light, they can see just how close the fire came. In agriculture, people live closer to life and closer to death than most. Sometimes the life is a newborn calf, sometimes the death is the same calf after hours of trying to keep him on this side of breath.

The next night, the same farmers and rancher who had fought fires the day before, stood in line for ashes. They’re told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” They know this to be true, and they know the portion of the verse before this one. “By the sweat of your brow you will have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made.”

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication.