Almost four years ago, then-20-year-old wildland firefighter Rebekah Epperson was fighting a blaze in Idaho for the Utah County Fire Department when she lost her footing on a dirt road and tumbled 20 feet down the side of a sheer cliff. She landed wrong on her right leg, but she thought it was fine.
“I was able to jump back up, and I was like, ‘I’m OK. I’m good.’ I had some little burns across my stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as it should have been, because I could have been dead,” she said.
But she started to feel pain in her leg as soon as her crew got back to camp. Her chief told her to go home and rest. The next morning, Epperson realized she needed to go to the hospital.
They did an MRI scan, and the doctor came in, and he’s just like, ‘Did you walk in here?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I walked in.’ And he’s like, ‘How?’” Epperson recalled with a laugh.
The scan found that Epperson had torn almost every single muscle in her right leg.
But the reality of her injury hadn’t hit her yet. She thought that after her leg healed, she would come back, invincible, and the whole ordeal would just become a legend in her long and storied firefighting career. Little did she know that her injury would instead serve as the origin story for her career as a musician.
Several scans, doctor’s appointments and physical therapy sessions later, a physician broke the news to Epperson that she would never fully recover from her injury.
“He walked in, and I was like, ‘So, are you going to have to chop the leg off?’ And he gave me this look of, ‘Now’s not the time to joke, because this is serious.’ That was when I was like, ‘Oh, crap,’” Epperson said.
She had lost about 30% of the connecting muscle and tendons in her leg. She was using a full leg brace and crutches at the time and was told that, even as she recovered, she would walk with a limp for the rest of her life.
Firefighting had been Epperson’s dream for years. Through Utah Valley University, she’d earned an associate’s degree in emergency medical services and was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in fire science. She was hoping to become a fire captain. But her injury forced her to face the fact that her career was over.
“It almost felt like a death sentence, like someone had let go of a guillotine string,” Epperson said.
That night, after breaking the news to her family and the fire chief, she picked up her guitar and started strumming.
At that moment, she began writing a song called “Change My Mind,” a somber folk tune about the hopelessness she felt. Almost four years later, Epperson still sings it to herself on bad days.
Under the stage name Rebekah Blaine, Epperson released the single a few weeks ago.
It took some time for Epperson to become Blaine. Epperson had always been into songwriting, but never thought she would play her music for anyone other than herself and her family.
Epperson started playing guitar and songwriting in middle school. She grew up “dirt poor” in a trailer park in Heber City and got a smoking deal on her first guitar.
“I was sitting there playing one of the guitars in the shop, and the guy felt bad because he’s like, ‘Oh, you can’t afford a guitar. Well, we’ll give you this one on a discount,’” she said. “I still have the guitar. It is the worst-sounding thing I’ve ever played.”
Epperson’s first attempt at songwriting was “very much middle school poetry, and (she) didn’t know how to rhyme,” but she kept at it, albeit in private.
After her firefighting injury, Epperson moved back in with her parents in Heber City and spent most of her days sitting on the couch and watching “Scooby Doo.”
Epperson, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also spent a lot of time praying, asking God what she was supposed to do now that she had lost everything.
“Every time I’d pray about it, I just kept getting the answer of, ‘Pursue music.’ And for me, I was like, ‘This is a stupid answer because what am I going to do with music?’” she laughed.
But she gave in, started playing more for family and friends and began recording music.
Epperson’s first recorded song, “The Story,” released last November, is a Christmas song about the birth of Christ sung in the country tones of Dave Stamey.
“He was the son of a carpenter. He wasn’t anything big or special. … And I feel like I relate to that,” Epperson said. “When I wrote ‘The Story,’ I wrote the story of Christ, but I also felt like I was kind of writing my story as well.”
While faith informs Epperson’s songwriting, her music isn’t confined to one theme or genre.
She’s currently recording her debut album. One song is inspired by Irish folk music with some bagpipes thrown in the mix. Another song’s lyrics focus on some of the “weird comments” she gets when she tells people about her injury.
“Since I’m so young, I get told all the time, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so resilient,’” she said. “They’re just like, ‘Well, be grateful it happened when you were young. … You have your whole life ahead of you.” And you’re like, ‘Yeah, but it was still hard.’”
Epperson hopes that, as Rebekah Blaine, she can “make things a little bit lighter for people who are going through hell, like (she) was.” She’s already gotten comments on her TikTok posts from fellow wildland firefighters who were forced to retire.
“Being able to talk with them and be like, ‘You’re not alone in this,’ has been such a blessing,” Epperson said. “It was a horrifying accident, and I’m going to be affected by it for the rest of my life. But in an odd kind of way, I’m grateful for it.”
Epperson will be performing under the moniker Rebekah Blaine at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday at the Wasatch County Library. She will also perform at the Thursday Market on Main events at Main Street Park beginning in June.