Meet Jeff DeSalles – From Art to Printing

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Born in El Paso, Texas, Jeffrey DeSalles found himself drawn to life in California and Japan. Before joining the U.S. Forest Service, he served our nation as an Intelligence Assistant with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iwakuni, Japan from 1971-1973. Jeff fully immersed himself in the culture by living in the mountains with a Japanese family a year later — before embarking on a solo bicycle trip across parts of the U.S. and Europe the following year.  

Not one to sit still long, he joined the Marine Corps Reserves and studied Japanese at the Defense Language School. Back in Japan, he attended Tokyo’s Sophia University where he met his wife while teaching English. In 1996, they moved back to California with their two children.  

By 2011, he joined the Forest Service as an Administrative Assistant and part-time photographer with the Pacific Southwest Region — forever changing the walls of the regional office with his brilliant and beautiful digital photos rendered as watercolors. 

Six years later, Jeff advanced to the region’s Printing Services Specialist and a go-to member of the seasonal fire-incident buying team. He retired from federal service at the end of 2022.  

*Editor’s note: In October 2022, Jeff spoke with us about his life and career. His reflections shared below have been edited for length and clarity.   

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Before we get into your Forest Service career, tell us about this Forrest Gump-esque, cross-country bicycle journey.  

When I was in high school, my parents took me and my two younger sisters on several camping trips. We’d go on a hike, but it bothered me because I always had to turn back eventually. The bicycle trip was giving myself permission to go as far as I wanted and to look as deeply and as extensively as I wanted.  

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Art seems like another way you have looked deeply at the world around you.  

Art developed in a strange way from model airplanes to oil painting. When I was in the Marine Corps, I started getting interested in photography. A decade or two later, I was putting my interest in photography and my interest in oil painting together, and they met up into digital renditions of photos.  

Early on in my Forest Service career, there were periods when I had a free moment or two and took advantage of the time to take pictures. I made them into photo paintings. As a spur of the moment thought, I put them all in an email and sent them to Randy [Moore, then Regional Forester of the Pacific Southwest Region]. 

I said, “Randy, wouldn't it be cool if I did this all around the region?” He said, “Let's do it.”  

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So, I've been to all 18 forests in the region, adding up to, about 102 pictures on the regional office walls.  

In addition to photo paintings, you helped bring all types of printing to life. What are some of the more common ones? 

Fuelwood tickets. The public can purchase permission to cut trees in designated areas. And they get a map and rules about how big the tree must be.  And Christmas tree tags. They get a map and a colored tag, and they wrap it around a tree that they've cut. What else? Maps. We have Motor Vehicle Use Maps, which people use to take their 4-wheel vehicles around the forest. I'm basically the agent to get materials printed.  

Can you give us a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the hidden complexities of this work? 

Because some of the stuff needs to be put outside, it's got to be weatherproof and have ultraviolet-proof inks. Some of the jobs require a specific color, like maps. If you see a color photo in a newspaper, they use CYMK: cyan, yellow, magenta and K is for black. But in the process of putting four colors together, expressing a road or contour line can be very difficult. Everybody's computer monitor shows color a little bit differently. We discovered the Pantone company produces color strips, each with a spectrum of different colors. And for proofing, I go down to the post office and send it, and they can see exactly what the color is going to look like.  

For the fire-incident buying team, what kind of things did you buy? 

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Pens, pencils, ink, paper… reams and reams and reams of paper. Plotter paper — that's big. Printing is huge and that needs a lot of ink. And you think, why would a fire need a printer? Do you know how many times they make maps of a fire each day? The fire is always progressing and changing.  

What else? Medical. We buy a lot of medical items. You go in and get an order for 500 little baby wipes. If folks are not able to take showers, they got to clean themselves, right? Foot powder. Everything. And they have to be small because the people are taking with them on their packs.  

Radio parts. They also need a lot of diesel exhaust fluid to help the diesel engines run better. All these foil strips to protect buildings from embers. Wheelbarrows and cubic yards of sawdust or saw chips to put on the ground where people are eating.  

Wow! What is the greatest number of incidents you’ve supported in a season? 

This year, I think five? Typically, they are supposed to be only 14 days. But if things get bad, they'll go 21 days. Last year, I did two 21-dayers.

I remember 6 o’clock on a Sunday, a store closing up in about three minutes. They're at the door. They’re ready to close.  

I come in the parking lot and they say, “Hey, Jeff.” … the people at the store know my name… “What's up?”  

I say, “I need a case of paper.” She says, “Well…” She looks in. “You know, I think register three is still on. Let's go in there and get it.” So that's the life.