I was in the land where everything is appropriately named. I had driven out of Boise, Idaho, past eponymous rivers, mountains and forests. The Burnt Pine Deli sat beside a grove of charred evergreens. Near the Salmon River (formerly filled with glistening pink flesh) I boarded a seven-seater airplane (Salmon Air) and flew between the jagged peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains. I was headed to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states. It was in this ominously named section of the river, beside a large red bluff named "Red Bluff," that the "Red Bluff Fire" would send our entire group of rafters scurrying downriver for safety.

When the Shashone-Bancock Indians-who used to inhabit this part of Idaho-had to flee from fire, it must have been easy for them. The Sho-Bans (or as the White Man called them, The Sheep Eater Indians), lived austere lifestyles and could probably have packed up their cave encampments and jumped into their wooden canoes in no time. The Sho-Bans had always rejected agricultural advice from settlers, and instead lived as hunter-gatherers, eating long-horned sheep and collecting bitterroots from the Bitterroot Mountains. The Sho-Bans were not a violent group, and without farms or a desire to fight roaming tribes, they tended to move around a lot. So, when lightning struck, and acres began to burn around them, their effortless mobility was key. It wasn't so easy for us.

The Outdoor Adventure River Specialists [OARS] rafting company caters to a lot of old people. It could easily be renamed OARP. It also caters to a lot of lazy people -though the two are certainly not mutually exclusive. Oh, and let's not forget about the people on the OARS rafting trip who have never slept in a tent in their backyard, let alone in the biggest wilderness in the contiguous United States -for whom fire and panic are inextricable. These were the people who were lured into the wild by the promise of cooked steak and wild salmon at night, hot coffee and tea in the morning and scenic views by boat in the afternoon. These people had very different motivations than, say, Earl Parrott.

Earl Parrott, or "The Hermit of Impassible Canyon," came out West thinking he was seeking gold, but realized soon after he arrived that what he really sought was solitude. Parrott, like many men before and after him, was enticed by the California Gold Rush. By the time he got to Idaho in 1900, he either loved it so much or was so tired of traveling that he decided to abandon his California dream for an Idaho one. He lived alone for 45 years atop Impassible Canyon along the Middle Fork, living off his garden, hunting and making Henry David Thoreau look like a complete pansy. He built ladders on the cliffs, traded with travelers for salt, panned for gold in the river and carried a pistol with him at all times in case an injury in the woods called for him to shoot himself in the head. He, too, would have been very disappointed with how the OARS customers handled the Red Bluff Fire.

When our hairy river guide came running down the hiking path just before dinner was ready, it became very clear that we wouldn't be eating for quite some time. In so many words, he told us that the fire-reported two days earlier that it was covering only about one square acre-was growing fast and coming right for us. Our guide had been a firefighter, and all the other guides had at least read Young Men and Fire, so their slight panic created instant chaos on the campsite. We didn't know it then, but that fire would grow to more than 16,000 acres and shut down the Middle Fork for two weeks. Other rafting trips would not be allowed to launch, but we would have to keep going.

The youthfully challenged struggled to pack their belongings-sleeping bags, medication, etc. Three middle-aged brothers kicked up sand trying to find their elderly father's glasses. A Minnesota man-whose ever-present grin and ultra-nice-guy mannerisms led me to believe he was a serial killer-escorted his female friend whom he had recently met on the Internet to the rafts. A woman with a nearly definite masculine past and her cousin-who looked like a female version of Walter Matthau-disregarded the guide's orders and sat on the boats waiting for everyone else to pack up camp. (Incidentally, they only gave the crew a 4 percent tip at the end of the trip.)

Mothers screamed at their young-adult children as we stood in the water watching the oncoming blaze. We were close enough that we could see trees crowning-when their branches seem to burst into flames-but still far enough that the roar didn't reach our ears.

Without fire, this part of the Salmon River would look very different. In high-desert regions such as this, fire is crucial to the health of the landscape. First of all, fire rids the forest of any weeds that would take away scarce nutrients and rain water from the pines and sage plants. But fire does more than just clear the way for plant life; in some cases it creates it. Ponderosa Pines, whose layers of puzzle-piece bark are fire-resistant and give off a vanilla aroma, can only exist because of fire. Only the extreme heat of a forest fire will cause the seeds of the tree to crack open and germinate, in a process called "scarification." Fire is often thought of as the ultimate destroyer, but here, it gives birth to thousands of trees.

The beauty and the unique landscape are part of the reason why this area has been designated "wilderness" by the U.S. government. In 1964 Congress decided, in an effort to preserve some of the nation's precious wildlife, it could designate certain areas as "wilderness." This self-conscious effort to preserve the natural state of the country is an uphill battle, and today, only about 2.6 percent of the continental United States has been designated wilderness.

The preservation of the wild is perhaps no more important anywhere in the US as it is along rivers. Since the transition of the West from frontier to developed land, rivers have always taken the brunt of environmental erosion. Rivers were crucial to development and travel and therefore were the most heavily settled areas in the West. Without water, a town could not survive, and this is why all new developments-especially in the Southwest-required a river. It's why Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque and El Paso are all on rivers. It's also why there are no more salmon in the Salmon River, because of damming south of the middle fork.

As we floated down the now-misnamed Salmon through the dimming and smoky evening light, the fire raging behind us, we came upon our new campsite. Apparently, we weren't the only raft group smoked out of its campsite, for here was a proverbial Hooverville of other rafters. "It's like Fort Laramie," my river guide told me. "With all the drinking and all.