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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. ...more
This book is Connors' story of his day-to-day life during a season in the wilderness lookout. ...more
I learned of this book here: https://wordsandpeace.com/2019/10/05/...
The Story
A man, who seems very like the fabled soulmate I’ve searched for most of my life, ditches his job with the Wall Street Journal (a tough call, but I understand it) to spend about 1/3 of his work year in a fire tower in a national forest. (His wife is so on board with this, she goes to nursing school so she can be the principal breadwinner and even lets him take the dog with him on his fire-watching stints.) Interweaving ...more
The Story
A man, who seems very like the fabled soulmate I’ve searched for most of my life, ditches his job with the Wall Street Journal (a tough call, but I understand it) to spend about 1/3 of his work year in a fire tower in a national forest. (His wife is so on board with this, she goes to nursing school so she can be the principal breadwinner and even lets him take the dog with him on his fire-watching stints.) Interweaving ...more
This was an excellent read. The author is bright, lively, and engaging in his style. I admit to being fond of the general topic having studied fire use and ecology in relation to my degrees. He cites several well known authors in the genre and talks about where he is and what might happen. In case you are squeamish he does not get graphic with the events of the past, nor of the present - he does describe them sufficiently to give a good overview and leave the reader to locate more books or infor
...more
I think I would have liked this book even if I hadn't read it in the midst of what has to be one of the worst if not THE worst fire season in NM. It's a beautiful meditation on life, wilderness and so many other things - including the role of lookout work in the lives of many fine writers such as Jack Kerouac and Norman MacLean.
Connors also has a lot to say about fire, of course, and as I read this book downwind of the Las Conchas fire, now the biggest ever recorded in NM, I found his perspecti ...more
Connors also has a lot to say about fire, of course, and as I read this book downwind of the Las Conchas fire, now the biggest ever recorded in NM, I found his perspecti ...more
Feb 26, 2015
Deedee
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