I just finished reading Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout. I've had this book for a couple seasons (a friend gave it to me for my birthday) and I finally got around to reading it.
I don't know why I waited so long, because the book was awesome. Phillip Connors does an excellent job at sharing bits of history in an interesting way while exploring the beauties of the seasonal solitary life of being a wilderness lookout.
One of the advance praise quotes on the back says, "I don't know what to call this soulful book. Memoir? Essay? History? And I don't know how it manages to turn months of solitude into such a gripping quest with vivid characters, including one of the Four Elements. What I do know is that Fire Season both evokes and honors the great hermit celebrants of nature, from Dillard to Kerouac to Thoreau--and I loved it." ---J.R. Moehringer
I have to agree with J.R. on this one. The book was very well done. I love non-fiction sort of self-exploration types of books. This book keeps an excellent pace and spends just the right amount of time on history and background of the setting and on Connors's personal adventures and reflections.
The only qualm I have with this book is the title...and that's only because I'm jealous that Connors took the title Fire Season before I could get to it and then used it for a wilderness lookout book that had not so much to do with wildfire as it did with hermitage. I had hoped there would be some big fire as the climax of the book, and was disappointed not to find it. Regardless, the book was well done, and it intrigued me enough to pique my interest in becoming a wilderness lookout one of these seasons.
If you like good writing and have any interest in the wilderness then I recommend this book.
Are there any awesome fire books that you think I should read?
Fire Away!
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