Where did you fight fire at? Lets see I was in Oregon, NM, California, Nevada, and AZ. I was a sqaud boss, crew boss, engine boss, I fought fire for Mt Hood NF, Lincoln NF, El Dorado NF, Tyobe NF, then a fire lookout operator for Tonto NF and O yea I was and Asst engine forman for Crater lake NP, and a crew member for Elko BLM. I started fire in 1993 and retired in 2004. In the 80's I was a volunteer for NJ State Forest Fire.
I started on the Kaibab (old Chalendar RD now merged with the Williams RD) in 1974 as an FPT, then transferred to the Cibola (Magdalena RD) in New Mexico as a recreation and lands forester trainee, then transferred to the Toiyabe (Bridgeport RD) as Recreation and Lands Officer and then to the Inyo (Mammoth RD) as Frontcountry Recreation Supervisor. Although I only spent 4 years in fire management, I kept an interest in fire management, managing to retire with 108 fires on my fire log. The most memorable fire was the North Fork Fire at Yellowstone National Park in 1988 during that historic fire season. I supervised an Army fire crew for 5 weeks.
My fire qualifications did not start to grow until I left fire management. When I was on the Kaibab the district ranger always wanted me to stay on the district when everyone else left for large fires. I drove a Type VI engine on patrol and they would assign me a couple of blue card firefighters when an additional engine was needed on the district. I wanted more qualifications and off forest assignments but the ranger always said "we can always count on him (me) to hold down the fort when everyone else leaves." Crap!
I had the following positions on my red card at retirement: Crew Boss, Strike Team Leader - Crew, Resource Unit Leader, Situation Unit Leader, Fire Information Officer and Security. I told my FMO to drop Security from my card as I did not like the one and only assignment I had in that position - boring! Security is also the only time I worked in logistics, otherwise I worked in all the functions except finance and was darn near assigned to that on one fire because I knew a lot about time and attendance forms used prior to computers. I was qualified as a Claims Investigator but was never assigned to a large fire. Teams of claims investigators were sent to large fires when structural or other property damage occurred. I was also qualified as a Personnel Misconduct Investigator but was never sent to a fire for that, but completed two investigations for people in fire management.
I worked fires in Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Those fires included National Forests, National Parks, BLM, Cal Fire, one on tribal lands (BIA) and a few on private land for initial attack to keep structure fires from spreading to wildland.
It sounds like you got around the three major wildland agencies, USFS, NPS and BLM. The only one I never worked with was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They are very experienced with prescribed fire. I've never seen any of their engines or dozers on a fire I was assigned to. I've never worked on a NF with a National Wildlife Refuge nearby that had a fire workload to speak of. The Sevilleta and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuges were fairly close to the Cibola, but neither had much of wildland fire workload as they were located in the desert.
Which lookout did you work on the Tonto? I've kicked around a bit on the Tonto, but never for work assignments.