Book Review: Fire Season

In Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, Philip Connors welcomes us into his unconventional “office”: a seven-by-seven-foot “glass-walled perch” 55 feet above the ground in the mountains of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. Connors occupies this cramped aerie from April through August, scanning the pine-clad mountains on every side for “a wisp of white like a feather, a single snag puffing a little finger of smoke into the air.” Such “smokes,” as the U.S. Forest Service dubs them, are the first signs that a lightning strike — or a careless camper — has kindled another wildfire. … Back to Article