This story exposes the friction between the United States Forest Service and the small, rural, fire departments in the White Mountains of Arizona and details the differing viewpoints on how the fire should have been fought. The author, a former resident of Tucson, joined the Linden Fire Department in 1999 as a volunteer and on June 18th, 2002 found himself face-to-face with a huge, out-of-control wildfire that threatened to destroy whole towns and neighborhoods on the Mogollon Rim