Fire Season: Field Notes From A Wilderness Lookout

Connors, Philip

ISBN 10 : 1441782133 ISBN 13 : 9781441782137

Editeur : Blackstone Pub, 2011

Synopsis

Book by Philip Connors

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

'Philip Connors spends his summers alone...It is a self-inflicted loneliness but, of course, everything is blissful. He is poetic and dreamy. He inflates his visions of that single mountaintop spot with an inspired and emotive lyricism....And with this book, Connors may receive deserved recognition.' --Traveller Magazine, Freddie Reynolds

'I loved Fire Season. It's a brilliant book; wry and wise and here and there shocking; its lyricism tempered by wit, and its anger by praise.' --Robert Macfarlane, author of The Wild Places

`languid, thoughtful...beautifully lyrical' 4 star review --Metro

`full of revealing vignettes and is refreshingly candid...Fire Season proves more than a simple poetic memoir. Connors skilfully marshals his deep knowledge of the environment and we learn about the changes in the approach to wildfire and challenges to fire prevention dogma...It is a pleasure to read such an informative and lyrical account of one man's time alone in the woods. Over the past century 90 per cent of lookout towers have been decommissioned. Fire Season is a timely epistle to a dying art.' --Seven, Sunday Telegraph

`a truly remarkable book...I devoured the advance copy a couple of months ago, lured by the examples of the author's descriptive prose that littered the cover...The book's premise is so intriguing, and it's such a fascinating read that I think would appeal to such a broad range of readers that I'm going to dispense telling you about Mr Connors and this cut-off portion of the world....Connors is extremely gifted at describing the majesty of the landscape and his relationship with it....between its covers are crammed elements of nature writing, travel writing, memoir and some philosophical contemplation of the art of being alone...Above all this book is an inspirational description of one man's determination to get away from life's stresses and strains and connect with himself and the world each and every summer. Not to mention a testament to the unfathomable with my standard approach of flitting from title to title and instead spend the entire column patience of the wife who allows him to do so.' --Bath Life

`This wonderful book is a collection of his thoughts and observations...Connors ably relates the drama of fires and storms, the animals and the grandeur of nature, with a poet's eye.' --Catholic Herald

'Philip Connors' Fire Season suggests our attitude to fire is changing. Part memoir, part eco-tract, it treats fire not as something we should tame, but as an almost mystical force we should respect... Connors' words are frequently poetic.' --Big Issue, Brendan O'Neill

'Connors' lyrical account of his time in the wilderness is a true modern classic of adventure, environment, philosophy and observation...the tinder-dry landscape of New Mexico has proved fertile ground for a new and impressive literary voice.' --Lancashire Evening Post

'Fire Season makes the landscape spring to life.' --Time Out, Edoardo Albert

'After the noisy bustle of New York, he relishes the peace and communion with nature in its wildest state...This wonderfully readable, poetic meditation on the restorative quality of being quietly alone with nature and your own thoughts in a frantic age has, like its author, a lot of soul.' --Daily Mail, John Harding --Book of the Month, BBC Wildlife Magazine

`Connors' thoughts are the perfect combination of the mundane and the sublime...There is much to admire and remember in this book.'
--TLS Jonathan Ellis

`The most interesting parts in the book are his reflections on our place in nature and the benefits if simply being one one's own.' --Phil Bloomfield, Oxford Times

Quatrième de couverture

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.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Blackstone Pub
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1441782133
• ISBN 13: 9781441782137
• Reliure: CD
• Langue: anglais