From the front of Dee Jensen’s Skull Valley Road home, she can look over the entire expanse of the valley. From the back, she sees the Stansbury Mountain Range.

“I love it out here,” she said. “But sometimes Mother Nature wants to take over.”

That was the case last Thursday, when strong winds sent a wildfire ignited by lightning racing toward her wooden home.

“It was right on top of us,” said Jensen, who has lived in Skull Valley for 25 years. “We’ve had three big fires out here and that’s the biggest one. It was spooky.”

The Big Pole fire has charred 44,200 acres thus far. But it has also taken a human toll, burning people out of their homes, damaging and destroying structures, killing ranchers’ cattle, and burning precious feed and rangeland.

On Thursday, Jensen heard lightning at about 4 a.m. and went onto the back porch to see if she could see anything. She couldn’t, and went back to bed. When she woke a few hours later she could smell the smoke that still permeates her home.

“It was just really obvious and smoky to the south, so I called dispatch,” she said. “They said it had been around milemarker 19, but it was right on the mountain and just took off.”

With winds blowing and the fire advancing quickly, Jensen, whose husband was gone at the time, started hosing her home down.

“The wind is what alerts you out here” Jensen said. “And the closer it got, the hotter it got.”

By 1 p.m., the fire had traveled to just behind the Bureau of Land Management Muskrat Fire Station, about 3 miles from Jensen’s home. She watched as shifting winds pushed flames to and fro around the valley.

“This valley is like a big mixing bowl because there are mountains on both sides and on one end, so when wind comes in it just keeps going in circles,” she said. “Then all of a sudden it went up the mountain.”

About 15 BLM trucks, including crews from Layton, Terra and the North Tooele County fire departments, aided in suppression efforts at the Jensen home. The firefighters started a backfire and put foam around the home. Jensen kept the house soaked for about six hours.

“They’re angels, all of them, as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

Although it was suggested Jensen pack up and leave, she didn’t.

“You just don’t walk away,” she said. “I’ve got 25 years invested in this.”

Volunteers drove the Jensens’ vehicles and dogs to the north of Skull Valley Road near I-80. Jensen left a truck facing outward in the driveway, just in case.

The fire not only burned around the Jensens’ home, but feed they were growing, and threatened about 40 head of cattle and two bulls they had taken to summer pasture in Muskrat Canyon in the Stansburys.

“When the fire came across there we thought, ‘We’re going to lose them all,’” Jensen said.

But come Friday morning, after making it through the night with Bureau of Land Management firefighters camped around the house, Jensen said friends from Grantsville and people she didn’t even know with horse trailers helped to get the cattle out.

“After about two hours you look up and strings of cows started coming out of the canyon,” she said.

Unbeknownst to the Jensens, one of the cows was pregnant and had given birth up the canyon just a few weeks prior.

“One of the last cows brought out of the canyon was a heifer with a baby with a dried-on umbilical cord,” she said. “It wasn’t singed or burned.”

Although they lost six cows, the family fared better than some ranchers, Jensen said.

“We have a couple that are singed, but we haven’t had to put anything down,” she said.

Marnel Arbon, of Grantsville, also had about 31 cattle up Muskrat Canyon. He lost six calves and about five cows.

“We’ll just try and go on, I guess,” he said.

Looking to the east, Jensen sees pasture that used to be green and is now charred. Driving along the road, she points out fences that will need to be repaired and replaced.

“We’ll do what we always do out here,” she said. “We’ll just rebuild.”

Tim Neil lives a few miles south of the Jensens. He works across the street at Ensign Ranches, which had 180 cows up Monument Canyon.

“We lost four cows ourselves,” Neil said. “It’s disheartening to see half-burnt ones. We had to shoot four of them.”

He plowed a fire line around his house as a precaution and watered too.

Although he said he doesn’t blame the BLM, he wishes resources could’ve gotten to the fire sooner when it was smaller.

“They did all they could — just, in hindsight, I wish they could’ve gotten here faster,” he said. “As soon as the wind picked up you could’ve had a million guys out here and it wouldn’t have helped.”

In addition to the lost cattle, the fire burned feed, but Neil said the damage could have been much worse.

“We were just dang fortunate,” he said. “We live in the desert and this is what we get.”

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com