‘A masterwork of close observation, deep reflection, and hard-won wisdom. 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 an homage to the beauty of nature, the blessings of solitude, and the freedom of the independent spirit. Connors’ time up 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, black bears, and an abandoned, dying fawn. By Adam O Riordan 22 August 2011 5:00pm Fire Season carries us through five months in the life of former Wall Street Journal copy editor Philip Connors as he takes to his remote lookout. His job: to look for wildfires.Ĭapturing 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. If there's a better job anywhere on the planet, I'd like to know what it is.’įor nearly a decade, Philip Connors has spent half of each year in a small room at the top of a tower, on top of a mountain, alone in millions of acres of remote American wilderness.

'I've watched deer and elk frolic in the meadow below me, and pine trees explode in a blue ball of smoke. The life of the lookout, Philip Connors writes in his account of a season as a fire spotter in New Mexico, is a blend of monotony, geometry, and poetry.

Fire season by philip connors