Steve Moseley

What a delightful surprise to read a Chuck Hassler column again in my latest Powell Tribune, decades after he and I became coworkers and close friends in the Trib newsroom.

We saddled up for many journalistic safaris in those great days (at least they were for me), typically with Chuck riding pencil and me along to play camera.

We were on a forest fire, 4WD crawl right up close in the Pryors under escort of the BLM. How unforgettable for a native flatlander as Chuck took notes and I photographed tiny yellow specks of the crew scampering around with hand tools, way too crazy close as the crown fire blew up whole trees, sending the inferno blasting high into the sky above them. We felt the heat where we stood, far away by comparison to those brave souls.

Another time, we drew the tandem assignment to do a national feature about the aerial fire suppression service headquartered in Greybull at the behest of The Associated Press.

Our country was exploding in flames; this was before massive forest fires became ho-hum common. It was all over the media everywhere. Our mission was to compile an intimate, inside account of the planes and pilots who flew those missions.

An affable and engaging young pilot, grounded for just a few days while his aircraft was in the hangar for repairs — something to do with the wings, he said – gave us a deluxe tour of the facility, it’s assorted huge, retrofitted planes ‘of a certain age’ inside out, and helped us understand so we could share with you what makes this amazing system work.

Chuck scribbled furiously as our new friend and barn-storming tanker driver spoke. I banged on my shutter release no end. We dutifully sent our final product off to the AP bigwigs and, of course, ran it in the Trib, too.

Then, sadness. Terrible sadness.

A scant two or three weeks later best I recall, horrifying video began being broadcast over and over on every TV network in the country. Not one, but both wings of a firefighting tanker shown in vivid detail falling off and tumbling away in midair as the fuselage plunged into the ground and exploded.

I so clearly recall the moment in the newsroom when Chuck turned his chair and, with a look of deep worry, asked, “Mose, that couldn’t be our guy, could it?”

But it was.

Still, I bet Chuck would agree the most otherworldly and bizarre experience we shared came on a sunny day at the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center’s horse handling facility near the mouth of the Bighorn Canyon Rec Area.

There to do a story and photos on a BLM wild horse gather, we joined a small clutch of federal staff and other media in company with supporters of and detractors from what was to happen.

They hid us behind screening burlap above the scene where we all watched — and I went click, click, click — while a dancing and diving helicopter hazed small groups of horses at a time through the winding canyon below toward the pens, then turned back for more.

In this case the date itself is key. This was Sept. 11, 2001.

As we lounged around outside the primitive headquarters in the afternoon, our only communication with the world beyond was a single trailer sitting off to the side under a power pole from which the BLM crew worked. They were connected to the outside. We were not.

Then, disquieting news began to be whispered among us. News from those in the trailer; something was happening in Washington, D.C. Nobody was sure what. Something that could not possibly be real, could it?

But it was.

Soon, even our wee horse-herding whirlybird was ordered to the ground in the name of national security.

I cannot describe what it felt like to find out how that day was playing out ‘right now’ in America, a snippet at a time, as BLM folks shared increasingly mindboggling updates every few minutes while we isolated few perched on a bench amid one of the most hardscrabble, primitive landscapes to be found in America. 

We were monumentally and universally perplexed; the ‘issue’ of wild horse management now dissipated.

To this day I cannot forget the shocked, tortured look in Chuck’s eyes when he turned to me and asked, “Mose, does this mean we’re at war?”

“Sure sounds like it,” I answered.

Sad to say we were that day, and still are, under relentless attack by the evil, mindless, cowardly forces of fanatic terrorism.