Bruce jumps out of his truck with an agitated look on his face. Even with a chainsaw helmet on and the sound of a woodsplitter roaring, I can tell something's up. He makes a slashing gesture across his throat – kill the engine. When the motor sputters dead, he yells, “Heat stroke, Stream Camp,” and then he jumps into his truck and he's gone.

Jodi and I get into her truck and follow him. We don't like the sound of it – Stream Camp is ranger housing. And when we arrive we indeed find a ranger, Charity, from Abol Campground, on the ground, her face crimson, staring blankly at the sky. She's passed out a couple of times, doesn't know where she is or what happened, classic signs of heat stroke.

“Ice packs,” Bruce hollers. “Wet towels.” We run into the cabin and find towels. I pull some frozen meats out of the freezer in lieu of ice packs and we wrap them in towels. These are placed behind Charity's neck and in her armpits. Bruce decides this is isn't working fast enough, and says, “let's get her into the shower.” I place a chair in the shower and we carry her to it, turning it on cold. The water seems to provide the rapid cooling we're after – she's coming back to us. We let her cool for a few minutes, and then put her into Jodi's truck and she drives off to meet the ambulance, blue lights flashing.

Scary stuff, heat. We had been working together on a woodpile, Charity, Jodi, and I, just moments before Bruce arrived, cutting and splitting in the midday sun. We have twenty-one cords to cut and split this summer, and it's heavy work, holding the saw out front for long periods of time, lifting large logs, carrying cut pieces, heaving them onto the splitter. But we'd only been at it a couple of hours. Still, it was in the nineties, and the park had issued a heat-index warning that morning that encouraged people to “avoid strenuous activities.”

Jodi had noticed Charity getting fatigued and switched her from sawing to running the splitter.

She continued to look tired, so Jodi sent her on her way and the two of us continued to work. Charity would tell us later that when she got into her truck it felt like a blast furnace. She didn't even remember parking at her cabin. (When she came to she worried she had crashed her truck.)

On days like this – high heat, high exertion – it's difficult to drink enough water to replace all the fluids you're losing as the body perspires to try and cool itself. Salts and electrolytes get flushed out in sweat – and the core temperature begins to climb to the point where the body can no longer shed heat. The skin actually starts to dry, and as the internal temperature reaches 105 degrees, it becomes a medical emergency.

Most people don't think about how much water they need when they're exercising on steamy days. When I was at Katahdin Stream, I used to watch climbers set off up the mountain with a single 1 quart bottle of Poland Spring water on days that were in the high 80s and humid. I would recommend to them that they bring more water, and often they would give me this look that suggested they didn't need any advice on how to take care of themselves. And, of course, we often have to go after people who become dehydrated on the trail. It's one of our more common rescues.

On this particular afternoon, we were all drinking plenty. Some days, though, it's just not enough. As Bruce likes to say, heat stroke is a heat issue not a water issue. It's all very individual, as well. Jodi and I were doing the same work and we were fine. The secret is to figure out your own limits. Know when to sit in the shade rather than climb Katahdin.
This is another instance – like our lightning fatality – that reminds us to respect the natural forces that we tend to take for granted.

(Charity would be back on duty the next day, after a spell in the hospital. She suffered from heat syncope, which is a cousin of heat stroke, sharing many of the same symptoms. Syncope is fainting, and what happens in its heat-caused variety is that the blood vessels dilate when the body's temperature rises, which makes the blood pressure fall and less volume reaches the brain, triggering lightheadedness and fainting. Charity's case was a little more severe because she did suffer from disorientation and was shaking. But she'd be fine the next day.)

Andy Vietze is a Baxter State Park ranger.

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