Famous Husband

Did you know Landon was in People Magazine? September 19, 1994 issue, to be exact. Back when Boys II Men and Princess Di were among the Best-Dressed. When "Frasier", "Wings", and "ER" were hit TV shows and a new generation of comedy called "Friends" was introduced.

But he didn't make the cover, darn it.

He's got a full body shot on pages 48-49.

With a caption that even says his name.

Landon fought fires on a Hotshot crew with the US Forest Service during the summer of '93 and '94. It paid for his college education. His crew was based in the Sawtooth Mountains in Southeast Idaho, although he traveled all over the southwestern states fighting fires. The summer of 1994 was a big fire season; around 3 million acres burned. People Magazine followed several crews for a few days documenting their work.

Landon is the guy on the right. They're holding drip-torches because they just lit that fire to back-burn: which means burn the area in a controlled way so that when the wildfire reaches it, there will be no more fuel for it.

Zoom out and you can see the tiny bodies to the right of the fire that Landon just lit.

Landon is the guy on the left. They're digging a line which means clearing all vegetation in a huge swath so the fire will die when it reaches the line. Landon carried a pulaski (a tool with an axe on part of the head and an adze on the other half) for the better part of 3 months. You should've seen his forearms at the end of the summer; he looked like Popeye.

The longest Landon went without showering was 12 days. That's 12 days sweating like a maniac, living and sleeping in a campfire, never changing underwear or clothes, wearing wool shirt and pants and steel-toed boots. Can you imagine?

This was a few years before we were married, but we were friends and heard all the stories at the end of each summer when he would come back to Utah State. Needless to say, the boys and I think he's pretty cool.

Just ask Landon to tell you some of the stories from those hot days. You'll either have a newfound respect for him, or be dazzled by tales of going without sleep so long that he hallucinated Roman candles (trees going up in flames), or you'll be grossed-out by the dares he took for money ($40 to drink a large bottle of Tabasco).

I'm married to this guy. Jealous?