About this item
In the tradition of Desert Solitaire and Shop Class as Soulcraft, this is a remarkable debut from a major new voice in American nonfiction -- a meditation on nature and life, witnessed from the heights of one of the last fire-lookout towers in America. For nearly a decade, Philip Connors has spent half of each year in a seven-by-seven foot fire-lookout tower, ten thousand feet above sea level in one of the remotest territories of New Mexico. One of the least developed parts of the country, the first region designated as an official wilderness area in the world, the section he tends is also one of the most fire-prone, suffering more than thirty thousand lightning strikes each year. Written with gusto, charm, and a sense of history, Fire Season captures the wonder and grandeur of this most unusual job and place the eerie pleasure of solitude, the strange dance of communion and mistrust with its animal inhabitants, and the majesty, might, and beauty of untamed fire at its wildest.
About the Author
In 2002, Philip Connors left the Wall Street Journal for a seasonal job with the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico. That became the subject of his first book, Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout, which was named the best nature book of 2011 by Amazon and won a National Outdoor Book Award, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, the Reading the West Award for Nonfiction, and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition. His second book, All the Wrong Places, recounts his life in the shadow of his brother's suicide and was named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of 2015 by Kirkus. He lives in the Mexican-American borderlands. Visit his web site at www.philipconnors.com
