A gaggle of tourists jumped out of their vehicles Tuesday afternoon and ran to the edge of the Parks Highway, cameras trained on a couple moose grazing in a roadside pond. It was a typical Alaska “moose jam” just south of Healy.

The real action was a few miles further south, where people stood on bluffs overlooking the Nenana River and on decks of businesses in the Nenana River Canyon and held up binoculars to watch yellow-clad smokejumpers cut a fire break on a steep mountainside. The buzz of chain saws echoed through the canyon. Meanwhile, a steady stream of…