How does a person go from being a music-loving New York kid to a college student studying political science in Norfolk to a parent living in Montana and fighting wildland fires across the country? The question still stumps Don Rees, a 1971 Old Dominion graduate who has been all three.

As a 48-year-old in a field where the average age is 30, Rees is weighing whether to bring his career full circle by retiring from his position as program manager for the Flathead Hotshots Wildfire Suppression Team, a division of the U.S. Forest Service, to teach banjo and guitar and fulfill the passion of his youth - music.

An avid bluegrass musician in the off-season, Rees plays flat pick guitar and five-string banjo in and around his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. He said he "learned bluegrass the way it should be played" while a student at Old Dominion and a customer of Ramblin' Conrad's Acoustic Music Shop, which used to be near the campus on Hampton Boulevard.

Unfortunately, fire season doesn't allow Rees much time for banjo playing, and it's no wonder. As the supervisor of a 20-person team, his responsibilities to his crew are immense. When fighting fires, his decisions are a matter of life and death. In fact, most people who are familiar with smokejumping or hotshot firefighters know of them because of news reports covering major forest fires and tragedies, such as the 1994 fire in Colorado that killed 14 wildland firefighters.

Such fatalities are rare, however, Rees says thankfully. In his 20 years in the business he has never lost a crew member.

"There are a lot of things you can predict with fires," Rees said, noting common sense goes a long way. "If there's a fire burning and it's in the woods and it's a dangerous one, you don't go in there." In a case like that, the crew will determine where the fire will spread and, by digging ditches, sawing trees and conducting controlled burns, will eliminate fuel for an out-of-control blaze, thus extinguishing it. These same techniques are used to prevent forest fires.

While his career may seem to be both adventurous and extremely risky, to Rees it's an everyday way of life. If one is adequately trained, does the work regularly and observes all of the safeguards, it's basic and relatively risk-free, according to Rees.

When he got involved with wildland firefighting, he never really considered the risks; he did, however, consider the challenge - and the steady paycheck. But it was not a job he had ever thought about during his college days. After receiving his degree, Rees traveled to California for the summer where he worked construction and surfed with some friends, thinking he might go on to law school afterward.

On a road trip to visit an uncle in Oregon, Rees drove through several of northern California's majestic forests. As an afterthought, he filled out a seasonal application for the U.S. Forest Service. They called and wanted him to use the surveying skills he learned during a summer in Norfolk when he did construction work.

He happily accepted the Forest Service's offer of a steady income and a place to live. Coincidentally, the barrack in which he lived also housed a fire crew. "I jumped ship from surveying because it was boring," Rees confessed. "Once I got into smokejumping I got hooked on it."

Rees worked as a smokejumper in Oregon in 1978-79, transferring the following year to the Smokejumper Center in Missoula, Mont., near the Flathead National Forest. As a smokejumper, he would parachute close to where a small fire was burning and, with his fellow crew members, extinguish the blaze before it got out of control.

Smokejumping is a young person's profession and those who are out of shape or faint-hearted need not apply. Requirements for the job include the ability to "carry a 40-pound pack for 12 hours a day while swinging a Pulaski [a double-edged hand tool used in clearing land] in 100-degree heat," according to the Flathead Hotshots' Web site. Then there's the willingness to work from sunup until sundown, with only one shower a week, until the job is done.

In 1987, Rees moved to Whitefish to take the assistant superintendent job on the Flathead Hotshot crew and was named superintendent in 1996. The crew he now supervises deals with larger fires that are dependent on fire behavior predictions and more complex tactics than the orienteering and small-fire size-up skills of a traditional smokejumping operation. The Flathead Hotshots are stationed in the small town of Hungry Horse, 10 miles from the western entrance of Glacier National Park.

In addition to the adrenaline rush he gets from the work itself, Rees enjoys his job because he comes in contact with people from a wide array of backgrounds. In the past, he has had three world-class snowboarders on his hotshot crew. A former smokejumper partner held a Ph.D. in economics. Each firefighter has a story of why they were drawn to this specialized line of work.

If his 8-year-old daughter, Hannah, ever decides to join a crew, Rees knows her love of firefighting will be for a unique reason as well. "She knows that every time I'm out on a fire, she gets a toy," he said with a laugh.