Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout

by Philip Connors

A decade ago Philip Connors left work as an editor at the Wall Street Journal and talked his way into a job far from the streets of lower Manhattan: working as one of the last fire lookouts in America. Spending nearly half the year in a 7' x 7' tower, 10,000 feet above sea level in remote New Mexico, his tasks were simple: keep watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country and sound the alarm at the first sign of smoke.

Fire Season is Connors's remarkable reflection on work, our place in the wild, and the charms of solitude. The landscape over which he keeps watch is rugged and roadless — it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines — and it typically gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year. Connors recounts his days and nights in this forbidding land, untethered from the comforts of modern life: the eerie pleasure of being alone in his glass-walled perch with only his dog Alice for company; occasional visits from smokejumpers and long-distance hikers; the strange dance of communion and wariness with bears, elk, and other wild creatures; trips to visit the hidden graves of buffalo soldiers slain during the Apache wars of the nineteenth century; and always the majesty and might of lightning storms and untamed fire.

Written with narrative verve and startling beauty, and filled with reflections on his literary forebears who also served as lookouts — among them Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Norman Maclean, and Gary Snyder — Fire Season is a book to stand the test of time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir, Environment, Travel, Biography, Outdoors

246 pages, Hardcover

First published March 10, 2011

About the author

Philip Connors is the author of Fire Season, which won the Banff Mountain Book Competition Grand Prize, the National Outdoor Book Award, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, and the Reading the West Book Award. Connors's writing has also appeared in Harper's, n+1, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New Mexico.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Connors tried his hand at a number of jobs and did pretty well. But his true love was the outdoors, particularly the remote outdoors. So, when an opportunity presented itself for him to spend half a year in a fire tower in remotest New Mexico, he dropped his reportorial gig at the Wall Street Journal and headed southwest. He knew a fair bit about the outdoors before beginning, from his Minnesota upbringing, and learned even more on the job. He kept on learning as he kept on re-upping for one more season, then another and another, amassing a lifetime’s worth of insight, contemplation and appreciation.


Philip Connors has spent 17 summers as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest. Lookouts are the eyes in the forest, even as the forests they watch have changed, shaped by developers, shifting land management policies and climate change – image and text from NPR - pic by Nathan Rott

In addition to the poetry of his language when writing of the natural world, Connors takes on policy issues as well, looking, for example, into the effect of publicly subsidized cattle grazing on public land, and on the impact of years of uninformed fire suppression-at-all-costs. Some fire is good, indeed is essential for the well-being of some environments. Smokey the Bear need not apply.


Cabin and Fire Tower – from Connors’ site

Connors is a gifted story teller and peppers his narrative with welcome side-trips. For those of you who remember Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, there is a wonderful story here about Marlon Perkins. When Connors tells of retrieving Jack Kerouac’s unpublished fire-watcher logs from the New York Public Library, it is like opening Tut’s burial site for the first time. There are enough southwest characters here to fill a good sized bar, each with an attached tale.


Railroad Fire – from Connors’ site

Fire Season is a work of deep love. Connors brings a poetical sensibility to his descriptions of the natural world he experienced. To be unmoved by his nature prose is to be unmovable. He also offers information and insight into issues relevant not only to our national forest and national parks, but to our land as a whole. Hopefully, Fire Season will spark greater interest in our national forests and support for the people who take care of them.

Originally posted - October 2010

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Fire Season was named the best 2011 Nature book by Amazon

The author’s web site is definitely worth a look.

Items of Interest
-----A short promo vid for the book, of Connors in the field, on Youtube.
-----NPR - 2011 - The Joys Of Life In A Lookout Tower In 'Fire Season' - An NPR story about Connors and the book, text and audio. It includes a wonderful, brief interview with the author
-----NPR - 2019 - A Fire Lookout On What's Lost In A Transition To Technology by Nathan Rott
-----excerpt

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”I do not so much seek anything as allow the world to come to me, allow the days to unfold as they will, the dramas of weather and wild creatures. I am most at peace not when I am thinking but when I am observing. There is so much to see, a pleasing diversity of landscapes, all of them always changing in new weather, new light, and all of them still and forever strange to a boy from the northern plains. I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being virtually useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”


The cabin and Lookout Tower that Philip Connors used.

I had a roommate in college who was a forest fire fighter. He was also a ballet dancer which may seem like two odd interests to put together, but both required strong legs. He earned enough money in the summer running all over the country digging line and operating a chainsaw to pay for his schooling during the winter. He eventually even commanded his own truck and crew. He had long, curly red hair which I often thought must have been a warren for errant sparks while out there in the smoke and roar of mother nature taking back what she had allowed to grow.

I couldn’t help but think about him as I read this book. I wondered if he is still out there fighting fires or if he has settled down to some form of domestication. You see he is off the grid. Not a big surprise. I can imagine that if he does get on a computer it is only to google himself and see if his name appears.

Philip Connors did what he was supposed to do. He went to college and afterwards landed a job in Manhattan working for one of the most prestige newspapers in the world...The Wall Street Journal. He grew up on a farm in Southern Minnesota. There is just something about farm kids that makes it hard to place us in a mold and hold us down long enough for us to be the same cookie as everyone else. Corporate cubicles are cages. I can picture him squirming in his seat.

I can tell he suffered from the same uneasiness that I felt living in San Francisco. It took me a while to figure it out, but one day I drove down to stare at the ocean. I could feel the tension leaving my body, not because of the ocean, but because for the first time in a long time I had a horizon stretching out before me. I could see for miles. I never feel as comfortable as when I have a lot of nothing stretching out around me for miles in every direction. People are optional, but only if they are quiet.


Philip Connors

Connors ran into a friend that changed his life. She was a fire lookout and something clicked for him. The next thing he knew he had quit his job, convinced his lovely wife to move to New Mexico (later), and took a job sitting around on a mountain top scanning the world for vestiges of smoke. Not everyone is fire lookout material. Let’s just say you better be almost phobia free.

”When you consider a person has to be free of a fear of fire (pyrophobia), a fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia), a fear of being alone (isolophobia), a fear of heights (acrophobia), a fear of steep slopes and stairs (bathmophobia), a fear of being forgotten or ignored (athazagoraphobia), a fear of the dark (nyctophobia), a fear of wild animals (agrizoophobia), a fear of birds (ornithophobia), a fear of thunder and lightening (brontophobia), a fear of forests (hylophobia), a fear of wind (anemophobia), a fear of clouds (nephophobia), a fear of fog (homichlophobia), a fear of rain (ombrophobia), a fear of stars (siderophobia), and a fear of the moon (selenophobia), then it’s little wonder most people aren’t meant to be lookouts.”

I think the one that will get most people is Isolophobia. We are so interdependent on each other that most of us have a hard time flying solo.

Give me a shelf full of the right kind of books and I can do without human interaction for a good long time. Longer yet if I can bring in a few baseballs games on the AM radio. The first time a hiker wandered up the trail I’d have to catch myself before I said something like “Greetings Human!”.


Desolation Peak, Washington a place that Jack Kerouac spent 63 days scanning the skies for smoke while creating a lot of smoke himself.

Connors talks about the connections with writers he likes and their time spent as fire lookouts. To a writer it seems like ideal conditions to expand the mind, focus the mind, and write the Great American Novel. Jack Kerouac discovered that he was willing to hike miles to pick up the makings for cigarettes during his 63 days on Desolation Peak. Connors discovered that Kerouac kept a diary during that time in shirt pocket sized notebooks. They were housed with his papers in the New York Public Library. Connors, with a number 2 pencil spent three days feverishly (Keetenesque) copying those diaries. They would prove to be a solace to him many times while pulling a long shift high above the treeline with nothing but sky between him and the next world.


Edward Abbey in the glass cage checking for smoke and pounding away on his typewriter.

There was also, famously, Edward Abbey who was teaching at the University of Arizona while I was in attendance there. He wrote two books: Black Sun and The Journey Home about his time in the Forest Service as well as at least one short story. It proved to be productive time for him sitting, watching, and thinking.

”The life of a lookout, then, is a blend of monotony, geometry, and poetry, with healthy dollops of frivolity and sloth. It’s a life that encourages thrift and self-sufficiency, intimacy with weather and wild creatures. We are paid to master the art of solitude, and we are about as free as working folk can be. To be solitary in such a place and such a way is not to be alone. Instead one feels a certain kind of dignity.”

There was the professor Norman MacLean.

”I was expected to sit still and watch mountains and long for company and something to do, like playing cribbage, I suppose. I was going to have to watch mountains for sure, that was my job, but I would not be without company. I already knew that mountains live and move.” Norman MacLean


The Norman MacLean fire lookout tower at Grave Peak, Idaho.

Don’t forget Gary Snyder and the poet Philip Whalen also spent time on lookout towers.

One of the benefits besides solitude, and having a million dollar view is the plethora of wildlife that is teaming right beneath Connors’s nose.

”One evening I’m cooking dinner over the stove’s blue flame when I look up and see, through the west-facing windows, two bull elk with their muzzles to the ground in the meadow. They are massive, majestic, the muscles in their hindquarters rippling as they shift their weight. One of them lifts his regal had and seems to look at me, his antler stark against the gray sky; he shakes his jowls and returns to his grazing. I slip out the door and sneak around the corner of the cabin. When they hear me coming they look up, crouch slightly, then bolt, their hooves thundering down the mountainside. My blood races. Their musk hangs heavy in the air.”

As you can probably tell this book produced a lot of fond memories for me, bringing a lot of my past forward into the future. Connors even mentions Dave Foreman, the progressive leader of Earth First!. When the FBI busted in his door, arresting him, and many others in his circle I was one of those people trying to decide how many rings of separation I was from having my own chat with the FBI. Connors talks about the devastation of Four-Legged Locusts overgrazing government lands and the negative effects of Aldo Leopold himself leading the charge to eradicate the wolf from New Mexico and Arizona to satisfying the fears of cattleman so proud of their historical heritage; and yet, so craven at the sound of a wolf howl. He gives us an overview of Victorio and his fight to remain free, using the Mexico border effectively, to prolong his ability to continue to be a thorn in the plans of the federal government.


Victorio, an Apache chief intent on not giving in.

We can only hope that fire lookouts will continue to be a refuge for a future generation of writers. Philip Connors feels he may be among the last to get this opportunity. We are in the age of technology eliminating jobs, corporations shipping American jobs overseas, and many of the rest of us being left with soulless jobs; jobs without dignity. Philip Connors for 240 pages gives you an opportunity to experience a job that it is simply amazing still exists. You too can be ”Caged by glass but caressed by sky.”

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars because I enjoyed reading the book, but for everything else, content, prose, direction, it's closer to a three-star. The book is absolutely ideal to listen to as an audio book because nothing much happens and so if you drift away, you won't miss anything. It is a bit like a day dream, you come back to reality with a pleasant, peaceful feeling and don't even give a thought to what was going on meantime.

I probably wouldn't be so hard on this book in the review if I hadn't just finished Bernd Heinrich's One Man's Owl. Heinrich is an absolute master of writing about not a lot happening in the woods, in this case, observations of a semi-wild owl,a couple of crows and a log cabin. His books have a depth I would have enjoyed but didn't find in Fire Season.

Still, the feeling of peace in the wilderness, months of a pleasant reverie interrupted by bouts of important excitement does make for good reading and it is worth the five stars.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I bought this book, I was excited to read it and hoping for insight into solitude and a different way of life. What I got instead was a steaming pile of self-absorption. Connors seems to fancy himself another Kerouac, going off into the wilderness to drink alone, be manly, and have profound experiences—none of which came through in his writing. There was a lot of hero-worship going on in the book, and I get the impression that Connors wants to see himself added to the list of great wilderness writers.

Unfortunately, Connors's love for solitude is hard to appreciate vicariously, because he focuses too much on how awesome he is. After reading the book, I know how well HE knows the mountains, and how cool it is that HE goes hiking and fishing, and how annoying it is that he has to scrounge for tips as a barkeep for nine months of the year, and how lame people in the regular world are with their less-romantic day-to-day lives. But there was no room for me as a reader to feel that I could connect to his experiences through him. Obviously, all memoirs and travelogues have to focus on the author, because he or she is the one doing cool stuff and writing about it. But an author is at his best when he makes other people feel connected to what he's writing. Connors's wife's description of his activities as "little boy games" wasn't that far off, if we're being honest. I get the impression that he wanted me to read the book, then send him a scout badge and a pat on the back.

The book's various forays into the history of government attempts to preserve/control/use the environment were interesting at times, but tended to go on so long that I found myself asking whether it was over yet.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2002 Philip Connors quit his job as a copy editor at The Wall Street Journal to head to a lookout tower in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. His home for the summer was a small cabin, and a lookout tower topped by a 7'x 7' glass room. His job was to call in weather conditions and to scan the mountains for signs of fire. After his day in the tower was done, Connors would take his dog Alice for a long walk before cooking dinner. He often went for weeks without seeing another human, but had plenty of wildlife to keep him company. Connors writes, "If there's a better job anywhere on the planet, I'd like to know what it is."

The author also also writes about the history of the Gila Wilderness. One of the most unfortunate events in Gila history is when the Apaches, led by Victorio, were slaughtered around 1979-1880. He refers back to other writers who worked as lookouts, naturalists, or foresters such as Jack Kerouac, Norman Maclean, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and more. He discusses firefighting, including whether the Forest Service should allow forest fires to burn or extinguish them. There is also controversy about the gray wolf, and about cattle grazing on public lands.

The book is an engaging mix of personal experience, fire lore, history, literature, and humor. Best of all, it is written by a man who is still in awe of nature after a decade of summers in the lookout tower.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jul 8, 845pm ~~ Review asap.

Jul 9, 3pm ~~ I enjoyed this book mainly because I am familiar with the Gila Wilderness area in New Mexico. Well, truthfully not with the wilderness proper, just with the Cliff Dwellings and Silver City, both of which I have visited many times in the past. I was never able to trek into the actual wilderness, but any time spent close to it is special. You feel it right there, or at least I did. Hubby of those years was never impressed, but he was not as much of a Nature Baby as I am. Which is one reason he is now hubby of those years and not these. lol

Anyway, reading about a slice of life in the Wilderness appealed to me, and I appreciated the author's enthusiasm for his workplace and the Nature he saw every day. I did feel as though I was in the lookout tower with him, keeping my eyes open for smoke but also enjoying the incredible view of familiar territory.

Like other reviewers, of course I noticed that the author is self-absorbed. He has reasons for that, which he explains in greater depth in his second book, All The Wrong Places. I am reading that at this time (July 9, 2022) so will have thoughts on it in a few days.

A solitary nature helps in this line of work, of course. Between the space a writer needs and the unavoidable space a wilderness lookout gets, the combination of careers seems to fir Connors to a tee. He has his demons, as do we all, and this is his way of wrestling with them.

The book is not merely a diary of time spent in the tower. He talks about the ongoing debate about letting fires burn (they are natural and sometimes essential for the life of the trees and forest) and suppressing them as rapidly as possible (because they will destroy timber the Forest Service hopes to sell, alter the scenic views, and destroy property owned by people who are encroaching ever further into places they should not be in the first place).

He talks a great deal about Aldo Leopold, who began his career with one viewpoint and ended it with another. This intrigued me, since I knew the name but nothing really about the man. Two more books on the way thanks to Connors. I wanted to read more about Leopold, more of his own words, even with the many quoted section included in this book.

Connors makes his own ideas quite clear, and I wonder how he would have felt about the giant fires in a different area of New Mexico that began as controlled burns but got out of hand. I suppose it is too late now for a wild area to remain truly wild, but I would love to see that. No roads, no people allowed, just let the wilderness be itself, leave it alone. Completely. And have a buffer zone around the wilderness so that Man in all his destructive 'progress' cannot cozy up right to the edge and then slip inside like the camel into the tent.

There was one incident that made me want to throw the book across the room, though. The season that Connors describes was not his first in the wilderness, so he should have known not to do what he did when he came across a baby deer one day while out hiking. He thought it was abandoned. He picked it up and took it back to his cabin and tried to feed it. How could he have made such a rookie mistake? He had been in the woods and the wild more than long enough to know better. You never ever touch a baby animal. If it is a fawn, it is likely doing exactly what Momma told it to do: hiding until she comes back and says it is safe to come out. If it is a bear, Momma will be closer than you think and you will be in a mess of your own making.

The pages relating this incident and his feelings about it were supposed to show how a desire to help can backfire. But how is it that this supposed woodsman even had the idea that he needed to 'help'? Why didn't he know better? Wild animals are wild animals whether they are cute little fawns or bear cubs or all those buffalo in Yellowstone that keep goring people because the people think they need a close-up selfie. This whole topic just irks me something awful. Sigh.

But enough of the rant. Fire Season was worth the read, and as I get to understand Connors better in the pages of his second book, I am already looking forward to A song For The River, where he returns to the Gila. Although from what I've seen about it so far, that book will be dark and traumatic for both the wilderness and the people who love it.

Seems to me that mood will fit the current situation of the world perfectly. Very hard not to be depressed and pessimistic about our planet after all we have done to her over the centuries. I hope at least a few wild places stay that way. Or return to that state. And I hope that Human Beings learn to leave them alone next time around.

[Diane Barnes]

dnf at 12%. Bored, not in the mood.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read that goes beyond the author’s eight summers spent in the Gila Wilderness as a fire lookout. Connors give us a history around forest fires, federally managed wilderness areas and conservation in general.


4.5 stars. Might be 5 stars for nature readers and something at or less than 4 stars for others.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this beautifully written memoir the author recounts one of the 5 month seasons he has spent as a Fire Lookout, sitting above the trees in a tower in the Gila National Forest in southern New Mexico. Connors tells us not only how he spends his days, but shares his thoughts on a variety of subjects. Among them, he talks about the history of the Forest Service, the evolving policies on fire management, and the philosophical changes, from an agency who brokered natural resources, into one whose primary focus is the protection of wilderness for its own intrinsic value. The author describes watching for that telltale wisp of smoke, countless hours on end, the books he reads, the evening hikes with his dog, the radio coordination with others in other towers, scattered over this vast area.
But most of all the author tells of the ways he has come to value solitude, telling of the countless days when he has no human contact, and how he has learned to balance that with his need also to spend time with others, especially with his wife, who he sees periodically throughout his long stays on the mountain. At the time of this writing, Connors was ending his eighth season as a Lookout, and knew that as much as he loved this life, it might soon have to end.
Connors is a gifted writer, giving us his messages sometimes in informative language, sometimes in lyrical and flowing expression.

[Krenner1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reported tonight on the national news, a 150,000 acre fire in New Mexico's Gila Forest is not yet under control. After reading this book, I wonder who first spotted the fire; who was in the tower. The author spends summers solo in a fire watch tower in the Gila. This book about that solitude, the beauty of the mountain, and his contentment with both is a slow read. You really have to love the mountains and wildlife to love this book. Which I do, and did. Along with his musings, he veers off into history about the Forest Service, how strategies for fighting fires have changed, recalls the ephiphanies of Leopold Aldo, and the writing of Jack Kerouac when he did lookout duty in the Northwest. It's a little bit of everything...as the reader you're out there with him in the middle of nowhere with not much to do and no place to be and nothing besides the hummingbirds, flowers, bear, and your own thoughts (both inspired and tortured) as you watch for that first puff of smoke on the horizon.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meditation on nature and solitude fit to rival Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and, I imagine (I hate having to sheepishly admit I still haven’t read such a classic), Thoreau’s Walden.

“That thing some people call boredom, in the correct if elusive dosage, can be a form of inoculation against itself. Once you struggle through that swamp of monotony where time bogs down in excruciating ticks from your wristwatch, it becomes possible to break through to a state of equilibrium, to reach a kind of waiting and watching that verges on what I can only call the holy...you need a good stretch of alone to really fall in love with it.”

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

It doesn’t take much in the way of body and mind to be a lookout…it’s mostly soul. --Norman Maclean

Perhaps it is not so strange in this day and age to want to have time alone to think about the world and one’s place in it. It may be necessary to first take that step away to appreciate the benefits of solitude. Some of us imagine we would revel in it, but surely one must also have a sense of loss—a sense of disconnectedness and of strangeness with the world. Perhaps this sense of being apart is the treasured thing.

Philip Connors has written a curious memoir about his years (eight at the time of this writing) 10,000 ft above sea level in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest from spring until fall, watching for fire. He claims successful fire spotters have “an indolent and melancholy nature,” and he should know. He spends long days gazing over the ridges, spotting smoke which heralds a cleansing clearing of dead brush, or a devastating hurricane of wind, smoke, and fire that eats all things manmade and natural in its path.

There are only a handful of fire spotters left in our western states, paid $13/hour for the dry summer months, but Connors is one of them. He relishes his 10 days on, 4 days off sojourn from April to August, catching up on reading, thinking, writing, while he casts an eye out from a 55-foot tower high above Apache Peak. He admits to a "perverse and loathsome envy" for those lookouts whose peaks are higher and more remote, and whose stories are better than his.

He tells of famous forest fires and naturalists that changed U.S. Forest Service policy, first one way, and then another. He reminds us of Norman Maclean’s classic Young Men and Fire detailing the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in Montana in which twelve smokejumpers were killed or fatally burned as the result of a poorly-understood “blowup.” He researches the jottings and writings of Jack Kerouac, fellow fire-spotter from years before, and muses on his own solitary path and the love of a woman willing to grant him the freedom to be on his own.

As long as the job exists, someone has to do it. But I couldn’t help feeling there is a degree of self-indulgence for a man (or woman) in middle life to take the time to watch for fire. Isn’t it even more so for a young man, so full of energy and promise, to do the same? I believe in contemplation, learning one’s limits, taking time to think through one’s path and one’s purpose. But isn’t it even more sacred to give oneself time to do that and then use that knowledge to engage the world?

I thought this as I listened to Sean Runnette read the Blackstone Audio edition of this book. But I came to challenge my position at the end. In the fire off-season, the author is a copywriter for The Wall Street Journal. A jarring note is struck at the end of the book, when the author tells us of his experience on 9/11, at the time of the Twin Towers’ fall. Here a man, who watches for fires in the natural world, finds himself in an inferno most unnatural. It is a weird, dislocating juxtaposition, just as a plane striking the World Trade Center in New York was for people around the world. But it leaves us unsettled again, just as we were at the time, for it brings home the arbitrariness of one’s location in the big scheme of things, and makes us think that watching for fires is not so indulgent after all.

This book was published in 2011, right about the time the devastating fires began which eventually engulfed Connors' section of the Gila National Forest, and burned nearly one million acres in Arizona and New Mexico.

Final note: fire spotters work in Canada as well, and Alberta is rebuilding fifty lookout shacks: article in the Vancouver Sun dated August 2011.

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a Forest Service employee it was hard for me to read someone who has only been a lookout for 8 seasons essentially give management direction, or management suggestion. Why don't you go on a 21-day fire assignment or write an EIS for a habitat enhancement project you're passionate about and get litigated on it...now you can "suggest" how the Forest Service should manage it's land. There are rules an regs, policies, etc. And as a wildlife bio...picking up that fawn made irate!!!!

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author's thoughts and exploits over 8 summers as a fire watcher in the Gila reserve

interesting overview of the evolving view of how lands should be preserved, the changing philosophy of Aldo Leopold as an instrumental figure in setting up wilderness preserves
also the changing best practices in managing these preserves through man-made and natural fires, evolving from a militaristic approach in fighting every fire, to a more holistic view that some fires should be marshalled and controlled rather than fought, to build a more natural cycle or burning - clearing fuel to prevent more catastrophic future fires, and encouraging fresh growth

also, get a good view of author's mindset in spending 4 months each year in mostly splendid isolation, enjoying his space and environment, but still linked back to mainstream world, through his wife,

[Craig Story · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impassioned, sincere, and informative. Fire Season by Philip Connors leads you to the top of the lookout tower through history and the author's life. It's filled with sweeping descriptions of nature and humanity. It was easy for me to be engrossed in the complexities and history of fighting wildfires. Then in the next instant, I lost myself in Connors' illustrations gazing in solitude into the Gila National Forest.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book about a rare man with an even rarer summer job--he's one of the last fire spotters in existence. 5 months of the year he leaves civilization behind, drives 40 miles then hikes 5 more (sometimes having to literally crawl through snow on his first trip up in late April) to a lookout tower and a small cabin and millions of acres of trees, desert, and mountains. On a clear day he can see for 200 miles from his posting. Alice, his dog, is generally his only company other than smoke jumpers, the very occasional hardcore hiker, and his astronomically tolerant wife who visits a few times when work and school permit her to. This book is about the beauty of nature and the history of wilderness in America--its changing values, maintenance, political standing, and its amazing beauty. This book is a rant, a love letter, a fairy tale, a plea and a journal that is both funny, deep, thoughtful, angry but always, always baldly truthful. A fantastic and memorable read.

[Scottsdale Public Library]

Fire: a tool, a fascination, a hazard…and an important part of natural ecology. With "Fire Season", Philip Connors – journalist and seasonal fire lookout – tackles all of these aspects and more in his narrative version of a season’s lookout-diary in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico. Interwoven with his direct experience are his musings on the history of the area and the nature of America’s national parks and forests, from their inception as rigidly managed resources to the evolving philosophies of wilderness management and use that are still being debated today. Not just one man’s half-romantic half-lonely sojourn on a watch-post, it is an examination of fire as a necessity for healthy wilderness – and of wilderness as a necessity for healthy ecology. Thought-provoking and lyrical. --Hillary D.

[Maren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having just hiked for 2 weeks in the Gila Wilderness, I had high hopes for this book, but I was seriously disappointed. It gives hardly any detail about the Gila Wilderness, nor really about fire fighting. Instead, it covers 4 boring months that drone on and on and on about the same thing (I love solitude! I'm weird! I love solitude!) written by a boring person. This book could have been great with a more expanded focus on wilderness policy, fire fighting policy, and the natural landscape of the Gila and Southwest. Instead, it is self-involved, self-important, and frankly not worth the time. In a different format, I think it could have been better as an essay feature in a travel magazine.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written memoir of Connors time in the American wilderness as a lookout for fires.

It is tinged with melancholy, because of the tragedy of his brothers suicide, but this is the place that he feels most alive in.
He writes of the wildlife that he sees, the majesty of the views and the terror and power of the amazing electrical storms.

He has a way of writing that makes you feel like you are breathing the same air, looking from the same tower, watching the same wildlife.

[Maggie Shanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book, I loved that he had a job that allowed him to sit in solitude and look out a window. I believe I would be very good at his job. I especially liked the references to other authors and books, the annotated bibliography at the end is very useful and it inspired me to add several books to my Goodreads wish list. I feel sorry for people who cannot be alone and am glad other people like solitude, reading and nature.

[High Plains Library District · Rating 4 out of 5]

Connors was an editor with the Wall Steet Journal who wearied of that life and took a job each summer as a fire lookout at Apache Peak Lookout in New Mexico. He talks about the yin-yang of his two lives: extroverted bartender during the rest of the year and the extreme solitude of his life on Apache Peak.

The pace of the book, like the job itself, is languorous. His descriptions of the wilderness are beautifully poetic. As he moves through the months of summer, he muses mostly about the importance of having regular, smaller fires to prevent the char-everything, out-of-control fires we currently see. Other topics crop up: a history of Aldo Leopold; information about a new rock formed from the atomic blast at Trinity; a segment detailing his feeling about guns after his brother kills himself with one. Two of the best portions are his commentary about Jack Kerouac’s musings while Kerouac was a fire spotter, and Connors’ riveting story of walking through the subway tunnels of New York City on 9/11 in order to get to the World Trade Center (he worked right next to it).

The feel of this book is similar to those written by Thoreau, or Ann Linnea’s Deep Water Passage.

-Marjorie

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip Connors left a job at the Wall Street Journal ten years ago to work atop a fire lookout tower in the remote Gila National Forest in western New Mexico. He never looked back. Working in the tower for five months out of the year, scanning the horizon for the first smolder of a fire, and hiking, camping, eating, drinking alone for the most part, is Connors' perfect job.

This book is Connors' story of his day-to-day life during a season in the wilderness lookout.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read. I’ve dug fireline, been on an engine and met a fire tower lookout. I enjoyed reading this book. Some places are five stars and a couple are two stars. One being when Mr. Connors tells of trying to save a mule deer fawn. He talks of the need for predators in the forest and then he does this. Maybe a wolf or bear cubs missed a meal. Couldn’t resist. Seriously though, this was a gods read even if you are not involved in the wildland fire world.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book of the Week

blurb - Capturing the wonder and grandeur of this most unusual job and place, Fire Season evokes both the eerie pleasure of solitude and the majesty, might and beauty of untamed fire at its wildest. Connors' time on the peak is filled with drama - there are fires large and small; spectacular midnight lightning storms and silent mornings awakening above the clouds; surprise encounters with smokejumpers and black bears. Filled with Connors' heartfelt reflections on our place in the wild, Fire Season is an instant modern classic: a remarkable memoir that is at once a homage to the beauty of nature, the blessings of solitude, and the freedom of the independent spirit.

Read by Kerry Shale

Produced by Jane Marshall A Jane Marshall Production for BBC Radio 4.

For those that have read Going Postal you will know just what I am imagining...



...Clacks Towers of course.

Yours truly is the flame retardant material flung on the fires of all those glowing reviews. Sorry folks, this left me cold; maybe I should pen Field Notes from an Elk Wilderness Lookout and add a trivia question about the name of my dog.

Next!

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Philip Connors has some serious writing skills but it seems like he lacks the discipline and drive to really polish and create literary beauty. He is honest, though, about his tendency towards laziness - I'll give him that.

This book does not contain a lot of fire thrills as you might assume from the cover. Connors does give you a pretty good picture of what it's like to spend days on end in the solitariness of a wilderness lookout, a potentially boring or exciting experience, depending on how you look at it. The discussion of fire management and how it has changed over the years was quite interesting as well as the history of the area. While the beginning of this book started out somewhat strong, the ending really fizzled into filler drivel. Connors has some potential, but not sure that I'd read anything else of his.

Content Notes: I did not appreciate the author's tendency to crude humor and there was a bit of ugly language sprinkled here and there.

[Ben Goldfarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" wanted to be. Yeah, I said it.

[Mrtruscott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this a happy 3.75 stars...it was not a perfect book, but a radical change of topic.

As I read it, I realized that I was a strange, bookish teenager, and am weirdly well-schooled in the world of fire-watching from reading Kerouac et al. on the topic.

Connors is no Kerouac, and, to his credit, he doesn’t try to be Kerouac. At times he got a bit didactic, but it could be that some of the science/naturalist topics were a lot to take in. He even threw in some Forest Service humor. He had a fairly good balance between the factual info, the nature lover passages, and how he navigated between the isolation of fire-watching and ‘real life.’ There is a back story about how and why he became a fire-watcher, but it’s not in this book.

I don’t want to know when the last of the fire-watch jobs were filled by drones.

I actually live within driving distance of Desolation Peak, where Kerouac spent a couple of months. I see that the trail is rated “difficult,” so... armchair travels for me.

[Kimbolimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was super fascinating. I really truly for-reals want to live in a wilderness lookout for a summer or two. I loved the references to several books/authors/people that I have read over the course of my life and many of which I still need to read. Great read. Does have a few mature topics.

[Brian Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely read, as one would expect from the recipient of the 2012 Grand Prize award from the Banff Center. Connors spent eight seasons as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest. The reader leans about fire policy, of life in national forests, and how early conceptions of national parks have shaped them ever since. Subtle and quiet at times, we see the life of someone at home in nature, and also how humans impact it.

[Zoë · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crystalline writing, so vivid I could see it in my mind. The last chapter was evocative of loss and very poignant. I look forward to reading more of his work.