Nine days before, on June 8, thousands of acres of forest had begun burning 50 miles to the west, ignited by a smoldering coal seam near Glenwood Springs. Eighty miles to the southeast, near Hayman, a fire reportedly started by a forest-service worker that same day was also burning thousands of acres, and floating layers of smoke and soot over Denver. But here in Minturn, the cool air coming in through the open window carried only the pleasant scents of a forest fire. It smelled sweet, like cedar or allspice.

For the next few hours, at least, I knew Jeff was safe at home. So I should have been sleeping, but instead I stared at his shoulder, the one that bears the scar from a fire that suddenly flared out of control during a training exercise a year ago. He’s never told me the whole truth about what happened that day, in part because he knows I’ve seen the worst that fire can do.

Six years ago I worked as a burn intensive-care-unit nurse in Albuquerque, N.M. I cared for many young men Jeff’s age–pilots, firefighters and construction workers who had gotten hurt on the job. Night after terrible night for six months, I suctioned black ash from burned lungs, changed wet dressings from blistering skin and gave more morphine than I had in the rest of my career, all in rooms relentlessly heated to 85 humid degrees to keep the patients warm.

I never imagined then that the sweet, contemplative artist I had married would ever put himself at risk for the same horrible injuries. A year and a half ago Jeff started volunteering with the local fire department. Then, last April, he went full time. He took a 60 percent pay cut for the privilege of jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to run into burning buildings and dig trenches around blazing forests.

This year more than 800 wildfires have burned more than 200,000 acres in Colorado during the worst drought in 25 years. For the past several weeks Jeff has responded to countless false alarms from nervous residents who thought they smelled smoke, and fought the smaller fires that haven’t made it to the nightly news: nine acres in Fulford, 40 acres in Wolcott, a six-acre grass fire near Mountain Star.

So far, Jeff has been sent to the coal-seam fire only once, three days after it began. The dogs paced the house with me, as I worried late into the night about the shifting winds that can trap tired and unsuspecting firefighters between walls of flame in the forest. I wondered how Jeff could possibly be prepared for this duty with his limited experience. He came home safe early the next morning, but his unit continues to send trucks and firefighters to the fire every day. It’s only a matter of time before he’s called to serve there again.

Last week Jeff and I rode our dirt bikes on a back road to Glenwood Springs. Evacuated residents lingered on the bridge over Interstate 70, snapping photographs of the fire that was burning less than a mile away. I felt a sickening drop in my stomach as people talked about the 14 firefighters who were killed eight years ago in the nearby Storm King Mountain forest fire.

Jeff and I stood mesmerized as the brown smoke billowed in plumes and dissipated in haze over an orange-red flicker along the ground. Black skeletons of burned aspens and lodgepole pines lined the ridge behind the bronze memorial to the fallen firefighters.

I couldn’t help admiring the strange beauty of the scene, though I felt guilty for it. When I reported the next day to the small emergency room where I work, Sarah, an EMT, told me how she had spent the night shuttling food and water to the firefighters on the front lines of the coal-seam fire. She described a hypnotic scene of glowing red embers in the high-country darkness. A fellow EMT reminded her, “Hey, we’re not rooting for the fire.”

All of us who live in the dry, western part of the state are rooting for rain. We try to keep busy, all the while wondering if the fire will hit our town next. The tourists have stayed home, and business at the hospital is slow. My co-workers and I play Hacky Sack in the parking lot, always scanning the sky for creeping clouds of smoke. So far, they haven’t come. Thankfully, neither have any injured firefighters.

Sleep continues to elude me, especially when Jeff is on duty, but I don’t mind. I prefer what I see with my eyes open.