Keeping it in the Family

If he can help it, you’ll never find Lanning Tyrrel ’22 sitting down. During the school year, he is captain of the Trap & Skeet team, scene shop assistant for the Department of Theatre & Dance, and an outpost manager at the River and Field Campus, just to name a few of his activities.

 

“I realized I didn’t want a degree where I would sit inside all day,” Lanning noted, drawn to the hands-on opportunities our Department of Environmental Science & Studies offers. 

He’s applied this philosophy to his Washington College experience, and also back home in Montana, where he spends his winters working at a ski lodge and his summers as a fuels crew member in Red Lodge, Montana.

Fighting fires is something Lanning was born into. His father is a founding member of his hometown’s volunteer fire department, and Lanning began fighting fires with the department as a teenager through its cadet program. So, it only seemed natural when he became Firefighter II Fall II certified and joined a fuels crew.

One of the crew’s main responsibilities is fuel mitigation. Over the summer, Lanning worked 40 hours a week cutting trees and burning the piles to lessen the threat of the wildfire and make controlling the fire more manageable.

“My work day starts at 7:30 a.m. We drive to a project site and cut until 4:30 p.m. When we’re working on a fire, our day starts with a team briefing, and then we go do whatever it is for the fire that they want us to,” he explained.

This summer, fire was an everyday occurrence. Most of his days were spent in Red Lodge on the site of a fire near Yellowstone National Park that received national coverage. 

“Our crew worked on a really large wildfire most of the summer. A guy rode his motorcycle on a non-motorized road, and he crashed and his engine blew. It turned into a 30,000-acre fire. Recently, it spread 1,500 acres in three days,” he shared.

Back on campus this fall, Lanning has added another item to his resume: he’s a resident assistant for first-year students.

“I like when I can make other people happy. It doesn’t have to be in any one way, but if I can make someone’s day better, I want to.”

Preparing for his senior year, Lanning has begun to consider topics for his Senior Capstone Experience—one idea includes incorporating his family’s rangeland management company in his research.

“I’d love to do a joint project on soil health. My dad was asked to be on an invasive species council for the state [of Montana], so my hope is to start a project in both Montana and Maryland and then compare the results. The soil is a bit sandier in Montana, but otherwise they are really similar.”