
Ive watched deer & elk frolic in the meadow below me & pine trees explode in a blue ball of smoke. If theres a better job anywhere on the planet Id like to know what it is. For 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. His job: to look for wildfires. Capturing the wonder & grandeur of this most unusual job & place Fire Season evokes both the eerie pleasure of solitude & the majesty might & beauty of untamed fire at its wildest. Connors time up on the peak is filled with drama -- there are fires large & small; spectacular midnight lightning storms & silent mornings awakening above the clouds; surprise encounters with smokejumpers black bears & an abandoned dying fawn. 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 & the freedom of the independent spirit. Advance praise for Fire Season: A masterwork of close observation deep reflection & hard-won wisdom.. .an unforgettable reckoning with the American land Philip Gourevitch His adventures in radical solitude make for profoundly absorbing restorative reading Walter Kirn