'I've watched deer and elk frolic in the meadow below
me, and pine trees explode in a blue ball of smoke. If
there's a better job anywhere on the planet, I'd 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 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. 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. 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.Advance praise for Fire Season: 'A masterwork of
close observation, deep reflection, and 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 |
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