'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
'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
