Fire Season: A Rambling Endorsement

If you follow my bookstagram Instagram feed then you'll notice one or two reoccurring titles since the new year.

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir and Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors.

Fire Season has engrossed me. My reading slowed. Each sentence became a fragment of exquisite flavour and I slowed my reading speed to a crawl to savour it.

Even before I finished it (today) I found myself trying to hustle it to other people. Read this! Read this! Read this!

I knew little about forest fires before reading this. I knew what I'd seen on the news, but because I was from a region where there had been no forest fires in recent memory, then I had no reason to seek more information.  But with my growing obsession with National Parks and forests, it was inevitable.

Connor is a beautiful writer, and fortunate enough to be able to submerge himself in a place where writing can flourish. He dapples his personal experiences on the hill with much needed historical and natural history, adding depth to his subject. Then he adds character.

I've seen Jack Karoac on the bookshelves. I have heard of A Sand County Almanac. I have heard of Beat Poetry. I've heard of Smokey the Bear. But they were just symbols, some of them larger than life. Nothing about them drew my eye. But Philip draws them all together in the burning halo of forest fires.

Karoac spent time as a look out. The author of A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, was a majour leader and transformative figure in understanding wilderness, both in his country of the United States of America, but more globally.  Beat poetry emerged from young men struggling with their place in the world, often looking to the woods as a place where this could happen, spiritually. Smokey the bear is an icon of children's education of the dangers of Forest fires.

Even if you've only ever heard of one, Connors uses them to help you grapple with impact of forest fires on everyone. He is also not afraid to look at the bitter sweet situation we humans have put ourselves in. The short term ideas of what it means to be rural. Our consumption. How we look at history of Native People. The earths old history and how we've changed it so quickly in such a brief amount of time.

It felt very much like the book that wanted me to read it. Haunting me. The cover. The idea of fire. The far away notion in my mind of what someone would do there. When it showed up in my local library, I could not miss my chance. So many North American books I was looking for had not showed up in their broad reaching system and here it was, on the shelf in-front of me with no need for pre-order.

And I felt this book. Not just factually. This man is living a dream of all dreams to me. A far away camped out place where the disconnect is profound, yet plunges so much deeper than we perceive these days. And it reminded me of fire. Of how powerful fire is. How integral it is.

Eventually I got a nice hard copy version of this.

I'm confident this will be the book I buy when I'm in second hand shops and thrust into the hands of unsuspecting victims.



This book is beautiful, and no one will listen to me when I tell them they should read it. :'(




If you do live in the United States, or in a place where such a job as a Fire Lookout is still needed, then take the chance to do something wholey different, and perhaps, dying. You can become Lookout still!

Some Book Doodles from Last Summer

Frozen Pines

Its cold in the house right now. The tips of my toes feel the frost.

I have read the bottom two, but they just go with the theme!

I've been on a bit of a buzz with reading. My hankering obsession has been for National parks. I suppose it comes for the excitement to visiting Canada again, but over the last few years my interest n travel adventure has grown. I'm not sure entirely where its come from.

I suppose it comes a little from the desire for adventure, which has always been in me.

I've been getting back into my The Long Dark lets plays and reading the John Muir. I've got a really interesting book on fire towers, that we have at the shop I work at but was really surprised to find in the library. Even more surprising was how long it had been in the library as well.

Speaking of libraries, I've started using the one near us more and more, especially since finding out about the inter-loaning system and being able to order them online. Obviously I have to wait for it, but I get the kind of 'wait for the mail' anticipation which makes the experience fun.

Went to a Lord Huron gig last weekend. They're a band I came across when watching the Movie adaptation of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. While the movie wasn't amazing, it was good, and when I peaked at the extras I found them discussing the band. It's been well over a year of exploration with their music and they're the kind of band that just isn't getting old.

Anyhow! Here's some of my reading pile. I'm starting up the ol' Instagram book feed as well so check out the gram handle laststoponroute.

Some Photos

Ramblings No. 1

To stare up at the sky, anywhere, would all look the same. Inky darkness.

Living in the "Old World" puts the ideas in the "New World" In perspective. 

My initial feeling is the long age of the land. Not that the land looks old. The length comes from people. The length of time, large numbers of people came and cultivated, established. 

I come from a pace where history if recent, yet fleeting. We struggle to hold on against new lands, and when we get our fists among the earth we are liable to rip it up and destroy it. Hungry for power against death. We must have industry, for the sake of profit. 

It brings its blessings. Health, life and casting aside ruinous illness that would snuff you out in grim ways. Slow ways. 

It brings unblessings. Curses? We don't see them as such. The wireless togetherness. My ability to send this out into the void of eyes and bots. The warmth, perpetually, so long as you work, hard or not. My food, free from effort. From being bent over the wheat field, barefoot in the garden, or hungry in the woods with naught but sticks and stones.

Once I looked at the old world with towering awe. The history, in every stone. Blood of battles seeped into the grounds. Lines of kings, queens, and history pushed into the crown. A crown built on the bones, the fists of the long dead. And we from the New World ape for that which is still remembered. We want the old, the things different, yet still us because this is where many of us came from. 

But as I am here now, with stones rising from earth, I can't help but look back over my shoulder to the place I left. 

The people there where for some time, unrecorded. Far more, their history was only carried by voice. Passed down, down, down to the next. 

It is the land that calls to me right now. Under stars. Under open or storm-tossed skies. The wild land. The land where despite our ripping, still is very wild. Deep black shadows in the woods, there, fill me with both fear and pride. 

Pride that the old world was late enough to not bury its fists so deep. Enough recognizing the wildness as more than an act of the devil. 

Perhaps this is a raving of a person who is homesick for some other landscape. Most likely this. 

My TBR Pile

My To-Be_read list was well over due for an update!

The holidays have come and gone like some food and pestulent filled tornado in my life and with it has brought a renewing of life, a budding of a new year on the branch.

I've got a few new titles. I found last year I did far more buying once I moved to the United Kingdom than I did when I was in Canada. I did get a few reads in on the summer, but nothing substantial.

What am I reading?

More of Naomi Novik's Termeriare Series. I've read the second last week and I am on to the third. Nothing beats the Napolionic War But with dragons and a text that feels from the era as well.

My non-fiction read is John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra, which Will describes as "The Boring Bits of Lord of the Rings". I am enjoying it. I've had some eagerness towards the National Parks in the United States, to the point that I have purchased a book on them written by a Robert Stirling Yard who was a great influence and contributer to their developments.

The forth book I have is The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell. This is part of me and my best friend's book club we're starting together. I'm really excited to engage with her on this.

Another book on the list is one I thought I would never listed here or even read. Often I found old dusty versions of John Buchan's books crammed on to shelves with little hope of seeing them vanish. But after being able to read a premise and get some context to this man, I have bough "Sick Heart River". I'm hoping its a nice transition from Muir to the next thought provoking nature induced read.

Everything after this is bonus, but I am looking forward to this pile. It is not so monstorous and does not make me feel unproductive.