The Art of Manliness - #473： The Solitude of a Fire Watcher

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the gila national

00:00:19.520 forest covers about 3.3 million acres in southwest new mexico during the dry summer season wildfires

00:00:25.080 pose a serious threat to that area to spot wildfires in this vast landscape as soon as

00:00:29.240 they start the u.s forest service relies on fire towers spread throughout the area that are each

00:00:33.760 manned by a lone individual my guest today wrote a memoir about the unique experience this job

00:00:38.060 offers his name is philip connors he's a writer one of the country's few remaining fire watchers

00:00:41.980 today on the show we discuss what the life of a fire watcher is like and what it's taught him

00:00:45.220 about nature solitude and time along the way philip describes the virtues of listening to baseball

00:00:49.940 games by radio and the value of slowing down in an increasingly rushed world after the show's over

00:00:54.680 check out our show notes at aom.is fire watch philip joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:00.740 here you go philip connors welcome to the show thanks it's great to be with you so you're a writer

00:01:14.600 but you found yourself in an interesting seasonal career as well a couple years ago as a fire watcher

00:01:21.860 on a fire tower in the gila national you know wilderness area in new mexico before we get to

00:01:28.640 your experience i don't think a lot of people know about fire towers in america and like what they do

00:01:34.960 so can you give us like a kind of a history of a brief history of fire towers in the american west

00:01:39.840 yeah they really took off as a phenomenon early in the 20th century with the advent of the u.s forest

00:01:48.260 service and there were some massive wildfires in the northern rockies around 1910 that kind of

00:01:57.260 encoded in the dna of the early forest service a desire to stamp out forest fires as quickly as

00:02:05.360 possible so one of the ways of doing that of course is early detection and so fire towers were

00:02:13.640 built on many a mountaintop in the american west some had already been in place in the east even before

00:02:23.320 then but by you know 1940 or so there were probably about 8 000 fire towers across the country and the

00:02:34.300 idea was you place a human being up on a mountaintop with a 360 degree view and that person by staying

00:02:42.880 vigilant will give you you know quick detection of a forest fire and allow firefighters to jump on it

00:02:51.220 right away and stamp it out so they pretty much lived up there for months at a time by themselves

00:02:56.440 right yeah the early fire lookouts would typically go to a mountain well away from a road and just stay

00:03:05.120 there for the duration of fire season from when the snow melted in the spring and until weather changed

00:03:12.080 in the late summer or fall that fire danger would finally be lessened you know there's some great

00:03:19.560 writing that's come out of the job norman mclean in his book of stories a river runs through it wrote

00:03:27.140 about being a fire lookout in 1919 in montana and he yeah he basically went up and lived in a tent

00:03:36.520 climbed a tree several times a day for a look around and that was the job and he would use a

00:03:44.560 crank telephone to call in fires to the ranger station below and uh jack kerouac also did that right

00:03:52.340 he did he spent one season in the north cascades washington state and he made much of that experience

00:03:59.920 in in multiple books of his he's probably the most famous literary fire lookout of all

00:04:06.700 even though he only spent 63 days on desolation peak and seemed to find it a disagreeable experience

00:04:14.760 too much solitude right we'll talk about that solitude here in a bit your experience with it

00:04:19.220 another interesting i remember reading through i collect old men's magazines from like the 50s and 60s

00:04:24.960 i think it was true magazine they had a feature about one thing that some couple newlywed couples 1.00

00:04:32.820 would do back in the 50s was for their honeymoon or shortly after they got married was they would go 0.79

00:04:38.140 and just do a fire watch for a couple months and that was their honeymoon that was an interesting

00:04:42.660 article yeah you know i met someone who did that on the mountain where i work back in the early 50s

00:04:49.920 i just happened to run into her in a restaurant in a very small town in southern new mexico and she

00:04:56.520 started talking to me and i told her where i was working i was just on days off from the fire tower and

00:05:01.520 she said oh my husband and i spent our honeymoon there back in 1953 when she was you know 17 or

00:05:11.100 something and he was 20 years old so yeah yeah it was a thing yeah it'd be funny hey honey we're gonna go

00:05:17.600 be alone for three months for four months on a mountain yeah if you want to test the strength

00:05:23.180 of the relationship i guess that would be one way to do it that's the way to do it so there were 8 000

00:05:28.420 of these towers at one point but they've been declining how many are there in existence today

00:05:33.960 and why are there so few so the numbers that i've been hearing in the last few years are that

00:05:40.280 somewhere between four and five hundred are still staffed mostly in the american west there are other

00:05:48.240 countries of course that use them too australia and places in south america but in the united states

00:05:55.180 it's a few hundred and there's a variety of reasons why the number has declined partly it's just

00:06:03.620 significant development into formerly forested areas you know once upon a time it was only a

00:06:11.880 lookout could see a fire in certain places in say california but with home construction and

00:06:20.220 development into those areas it's just as likely that someone you know standing on their back deck

00:06:27.220 will see the fire as quickly as a lookout would and in other places they've just gone to different

00:06:35.000 detection methods like over flights with airplanes and you know there's just a continual push to use

00:06:43.600 more technology in place of actual human beings i mean we see that across our entire society but

00:06:50.940 it's also true for lookouts that people dream of using um you know infrared cameras linked with

00:06:59.140 pattern recognition software or satellites maybe unmanned aerial vehicles drones so all of those things

00:07:09.980 have um pushed lookouts not not to the brink of extinction but we are definitely a dwindling

00:07:17.280 threatened species right well let's talk about how you got connected with this when did you start

00:07:22.960 working a fire tower in new mexico how did that happen so my first year was 2002 16 years ago and

00:07:31.440 i just got lucky i um i got a note from a friend of mine an old friend from the university of montana and

00:07:39.340 she wrote to me and said that she had got a gig as a summer lookout down in the gila in new

00:07:46.980 mexico and that i should come visit at the time i was working as a copy editor in new york city at

00:07:55.440 the wall street journal so she sort of teased me and said you know get your flabby white keister out of 0.99

00:08:01.020 that cubicle and escape the canyons of lower manhattan for a view from a mountain in new mexico so

00:08:08.920 naturally i couldn't resist that invitation i flew to albuquerque and drove south from there a couple

00:08:18.480 hours and met up with my friend and we hiked into this fire tower many miles from the nearest road

00:08:25.820 she was on days off when we met up and i spent 72 hours there and just absolutely fell in love with

00:08:35.580 the view the landscape the lifestyle the essence of the job and she had been there by then for months

00:08:46.280 and was kind of itching for more action than one typically sees just living on a mountaintop she

00:08:52.620 wanted to go fight a fire so she talked her boss into letting her do that and allowing me to slot in

00:09:02.460 as her replacement for what remained of that season and the rest is history i've gone back

00:09:08.740 every summer since 2002 and how long so you start in the summer how long are you there how long does

00:09:14.800 a fire season last so our fire season starts pretty early because we're so far south we typically kick off

00:09:21.800 with fires in april and i'll be on the mountain typically until sometime in august every year

00:09:30.360 we get a monsoon rain weather pattern that puts an end to fire danger here usually starting in

00:09:39.620 sometime in july and extending into august so most seasons i'll work from early april to at least mid

00:09:47.920 august okay and so you're in the gila national wilderness area correct yeah it's the gila national

00:09:53.980 forest which is 3.3 million acres and inside of that is a protected roadless wilderness area of half a

00:10:03.880 million acres gotcha and why are there still towers there is it just because it's so large or is it

00:10:10.360 more susceptible to fires actually both it's a very large landscape like i said 3.3 million acres

00:10:17.620 the gila national forest is as large as some small eastern states and it is very susceptible to

00:10:27.280 lightning caused wildfires the nature of the landscape it's very dry it's very arid forest

00:10:34.440 and it gets hit by more lightning than any other landscape in america aside from the gulf coast region

00:10:44.700 so combine those two things very uh arid flammable fuels and lots of lightning and so every season we see

00:10:56.240 typically hundreds of wildfire starts in the gila and because it's not very uh settled there aren't

00:11:05.800 many towns nearby or within the forest it still does require eyes in the sky to

00:11:13.540 detect wildfires there so you're not the only tower there there's other towers in the area that's

00:11:19.940 correct there are 10 of us actually still staffed in the gila which probably is more than any other

00:11:26.300 forest in the lower 48 well and so whenever you see a wildfire so i mean i imagine you see the smoke

00:11:33.000 first what what goes on how do you all triangulate where the fire's at how does that work yeah so we um

00:11:40.020 we're all equipped with two essential tools one is a two-way vhf radio so we can communicate with

00:11:48.100 other lookouts and with dispatchers and with firefighters on the ground and we have um this

00:11:55.620 tool that really hasn't changed in 100 years called the osborne firefinder which is essentially a sighting

00:12:03.180 device it's almost like a gun sight and what you do with it is you zero in on the precise location of the

00:12:12.820 smoke and you're right it is typically smoke you see first not flames and when you do that it'll give

00:12:22.140 you a compass reading expressed in degrees from zero to 360 that is the is what we call the azimuth

00:12:33.100 which is basically a straight line between your location and the smoke and then what we can do with

00:12:39.460 that is talk to other lookouts and say my azimuth is say you know 90 degrees from my location

00:12:45.860 that other lookout if he or she can see the smoke will also come up with an azimuth reading and then we

00:12:54.480 turn to these maps of the forest which are typically on a drop-down board on hinges

00:13:02.100 within our fire tower and we just cross our lines on those maps using compass rosettes that are

00:13:11.160 affixed to the map and it's a simple case of triangulation and if we have at least two lines

00:13:19.740 from two different locations to the smoke then we can pinpoint it with great accuracy so you said

00:13:26.900 there you see you know a couple hundred of these lightning started wildfires uh are do you get

00:13:33.860 like an adrenaline rush still like anytime you see smoke and like you get excited you feel your heart

00:13:38.520 go fast or have you gotten used to it where it's it's it's just it's just like part of the job yeah

00:13:44.060 you'd think after 16 seasons and many dozens of fires called in from my location it would kind of get

00:13:52.520 to be old hat but it is the case that for me anyway i still do get that adrenaline rush partly it's just

00:14:00.300 knowing that i'm the only person in the world seeing this natural phenomenon and uh i'm about to

00:14:10.540 sound the alarm and give the fire a name all of those play into uh the adrenaline rush and sometimes

00:14:19.720 you know you can go weeks maybe even a couple months staying vigilant and nothing happens

00:14:26.600 and then all of a sudden one day it's there so yeah it never does fail to be thrilling

00:14:33.480 yeah that was another thing i didn't know fires get names and the person who sees it first gets to

00:14:38.740 name it sort of like a hurricane gets a name right yeah we typically try to give it a name

00:14:43.940 that's based on a local landmark so you know a river or a canyon or a the name of a peak or some

00:14:52.200 other prominent local landmark so you know usually when you hear fires in the news it's because someone

00:15:01.440 spotted it and you know a lot of places where there aren't lookouts it'll be the firefighters or the

00:15:06.720 dispatch center that gives it a name but still here on the gila it's the lookouts that name the fires

00:15:13.860 so let's talk about one of the i mean i think the thing i found most fascinating about this was

00:15:19.420 your experience with solitude in nature because this is something that i think a lot of people

00:15:23.760 today don't experience um so before that we get to the specific instances of that let's talk about

00:15:30.140 like your accommodations to give people an idea of what your day-to-day was like so there's a fire

00:15:34.200 tower like where did you sleep is there like a cabin on top of the tower that you you slept in

00:15:39.920 at my mountain there's a cabin down below the tower unconnected with the tower a lot of lookouts

00:15:47.780 have live-in towers that are roomier they're say you know 12 by 12 or 14 by 14 feet often with a catwalk

00:15:57.480 around the exterior my tower is one of those bare bones utilitarian spaces that's uh seven by seven feet

00:16:07.300 and not really a livable space it's just big enough to hold the osborne firefinder and allow one person

00:16:16.640 to walk around the outside of it and so there's a cabin that's been there for many many decades

00:16:23.320 where i live and it's just right below the tower okay and so when you went there like what how far

00:16:30.580 away were you from like humanity i mean were you was it hundreds of miles away i mean how how alone

00:16:37.300 were you not quite that extreme i'm five miles from the nearest road and that road will take you to

00:16:47.620 a town with um adult beverages and a lunch spot in about uh 40 minute drive so you know it's it's

00:16:59.700 relatively isolated just because of the distance from automobiles but you know if i hike real fast

00:17:08.460 down the down the hill to my truck and speed off away i can be having i could leave my tower and be

00:17:16.540 drinking a beer in like two and a half hours gotcha we're gonna take a quick break for your word from

00:17:21.840 our sponsors and now back to the show so how long did you go without seeing or talking to anyone

00:17:28.960 during this when you're up on a season uh it varies quite a bit i'm there for 10 day stretches

00:17:36.660 at a time and then i get four days off so during those 10 days i live there stay there sleep there

00:17:43.580 during the four days off i hike out and go home but during those 10 days i might see nobody for 10 days

00:17:52.080 it's pretty rare that that happens but it has happened and other times i'll see day hikers

00:17:57.600 you know when the weather's nice in the summer i might see day hikers three or four days in a row

00:18:04.240 you know maybe a couple one day and three or four people the next day and then i'll go four or five

00:18:12.020 days without seeing anybody so it's pretty variable it often depends on just how good the weather is and

00:18:18.820 how much people decide they want to get out and take a walk but it is still possible for me to go 10

00:18:25.620 days without seeing anybody which is always rather delightful for me yeah was that i was gonna ask

00:18:30.980 you was that unnerving but sounds like you actually enjoyed that solitude yeah on the contrary for

00:18:36.580 years and years every time i heard hikers coming up the hill having a conversation with each other or

00:18:42.740 maybe just see saw them appear through the trees at the edge of the meadow my heart would sink because

00:18:49.140 i'd think oh geez i gotta exercise my vocal cords and uh give my little public relations speech about 0.99

00:18:57.700 wildfire and what this place is all about but over the years i found if you're willing to hike five

00:19:04.260 miles uphill for the sheer pleasure of it you're typically a quality human being and so i've come to

00:19:12.020 treasure my my interactions with strangers who show up there unannounced and just accept that that's part

00:19:19.460 of the deal you know it's i'm lucky i get to live for months each year on a piece of public land that's

00:19:27.540 owned by all of us and so i you know i don't need to get all possessive about it it's owned by every other

00:19:36.100 american too so if they want to come and enjoy it take a hike see the view from a mountain they

00:19:42.420 should absolutely do that and uh i'll try to be as welcoming as i can uh while they're there i'm

00:19:49.940 curious do you notice like do you like go through a transition from you know there's a there's a you

00:19:57.060 that is you before you know fire season where you're you're interacting with people probably more

00:20:02.340 regularly than you do when you're on fire season like is there a difference between that you and

00:20:07.460 then as you go further further deeper into the season where you're more and more alone like do

00:20:12.660 you change at all do you notice a change in your brain does i mean you know you know something trying

00:20:16.980 to ask here yeah you know i do my wife would probably tell you that uh come you know late february

00:20:24.820 early march early march of every year i start to get a little uh anxious

00:20:30.740 a little um maybe even a little unpleasant to be around and it's it's because i'm looking forward to

00:20:38.420 this incredible experience that i keep having summer after summer and keep loving more and more

00:20:44.580 the more i do it it's interesting because i have that 10 day stretch of work there and then four days off

00:20:53.940 it's not like i unplug so radically from the world for a really long stretch of time

00:21:02.340 i come to treasure that balance between solitude and sociability so on my days off every other weekend

00:21:12.900 you know it's kind of fun to get together with friends and

00:21:15.380 catch up and you know sit down and gossip or have a couple beers and and then uh then i get to escape

00:21:24.900 again and go hang out by myself for 10 days at the end of the season i do always find it's really hard

00:21:31.620 to let go the season is always too short no matter how long it extends you know i'd probably prefer to

00:21:38.420 be there about 10 months a year instead of five but you know it's just part of the deal it's a

00:21:44.740 seasonal job living there in the winter would probably be really brutal anyway because it'd be

00:21:49.860 really cold up above 10 000 feet so i try to i try to just remember all things in moderation and all

00:22:00.100 things in balance you know the solitude and the social ability the high country bliss and the

00:22:08.420 neon plastic valleys it's all it's all part of my life and i try to try to remain pretty balanced about

00:22:14.500 it how has your connection to nature changed since working as a fire watch because this you're an

00:22:20.020 interesting position because you're observing nature from a very macro level it's not like you're like

00:22:26.500 looking at an individual leaf like a botanist but like you're looking at an entire landscape so imagine

00:22:32.500 that's changed the way you perceive nature in some way yeah it has it's interesting because i get to

00:22:39.620 spend more than 100 days there every year i can spend a whole afternoon like down on my hands and knees

00:22:50.180 if it's if it's a cloudy day and fire danger is really low like geeking out on short-horned lizards

00:22:57.780 and salamanders poking out of their holes in the meadow below my tower so i can you know spend time

00:23:05.060 focused on the micro world and the micro life that i share the mountain with and at the same time i'm

00:23:14.180 mostly looking at a piece of country that's really big from from my tower i can see

00:23:24.500 oh if you went to the horizon and drew it out on a map and and lined it you'd probably encompass an

00:23:30.820 area of close to 20 000 square miles i mean it's it's a phenomenal view you can see forever

00:23:37.620 and one of the interesting things about the experience of being there as long as i have is

00:23:44.500 i've seen changes changes that are happening on a landscape scale the fires keep getting bigger and

00:23:52.660 hotter a lot of the old growth forest that you know has been there since who knows it's probably been

00:24:00.820 there in some form or another you know burning and regenerating for 10 000 years a lot of it's going

00:24:08.900 away now and it doesn't seem like it's going to come back because of climate change so yeah i toggle back

00:24:15.700 and forth between that that real close-up micro attention to the world around me up there and the big

00:24:26.340 picture view which to me is rather scary watching it change on a landscape scale relatively quickly

00:24:36.020 is like besides the site is there something about the sound like is it just like supremely quiet up

00:24:40.660 there or is actually pretty loud with the wind ah depends on the season and the day the springtime

00:24:46.180 tends to be very windy there and the noise of that can be deafening and actually challenging for one's

00:24:54.260 mental health to live amid that howl day after day i've measured wind gusts above uh 80 miles an hour

00:25:02.980 there and so you can imagine hanging out in a a metal tower built in the late 1930s maybe not being the most

00:25:12.900 pleasant way to while away your work day and then you know later in the season the wind dies down we get

00:25:20.660 toward june and july and into august and yeah there are days of just supreme silence nothing but bird calls

00:25:30.420 so i see that place in many different moods and weathers and some i prefer more than others but it's

00:25:39.140 kind of an interesting experience to see the range of moods and weathers in a place if you just

00:25:46.020 root yourself there and and sit and watch for a while do you get bored up there like you're just

00:25:51.140 staring out you know thousands of thousands of acres and you're trying to and i mean i'm sure you're

00:25:57.380 does your mind wander like what do you think about like what do you do to while the way the time

00:26:01.620 yeah uh people ask me that a lot and it is just the case that i i can't remember a moment there when

00:26:08.420 i was ever bored the view is so interesting for one thing there's plenty to do just from a logistical

00:26:16.900 perspective you know i wash my clothes by hand and hang them on the clothesline i uh chop wood

00:26:25.700 for warmth because the nights get cold in april you know it sometimes gets down into the teens

00:26:31.220 and so you know i need a fairly large stack of wood there every season so there's also

00:26:39.460 just facilities maintenance that i have to do painting roof repair keeping the gutters tight

00:26:47.380 because they catch rain water that filters into my cistern and is my drinking water source

00:26:53.860 and then it's also the case i like to read and write so uh i'm blessed i have a job where if i

00:27:03.140 look out the window every 10 or 15 minutes and do a 360 scan i am pretty much performing the basics of

00:27:11.620 my job and i can multitask you know by tapping away on the typewriter or reading a book and in the

00:27:19.780 tower and just staying vigilant while i'm doing that toggling back and forth between these activities

00:27:27.220 so there's plenty to see plenty to do and enough to keep me busy that i i can't remember a time where

00:27:36.260 i thought yeah i wish i were not here i wish i were somewhere else where there was more stimulation

00:27:42.260 because there's plenty enough for me there do you notice that your writing changes when you're up

00:27:47.060 there or is it pretty much the same um yeah it's interesting because i use different tools at

00:27:52.980 different times and i think that does affect the writing over the years i've done a lot of writing

00:27:59.380 by hand there in notebooks and i've also done a fair amount of writing on an old olivetti latera typewriter

00:28:08.820 and that feels different than when i come home and use my laptop and it i think it's good for me

00:28:17.620 actually because especially the long hand slows me down and i really treasure the ability to

00:28:28.260 to actually work and think that way because seems like most of the pressure in our culture is to do

00:28:35.700 everything faster and i just find i'm a a slow thinker a slow talker as you're probably finding in this

00:28:45.460 interview and i i think better and more clearly if i slow things down and it's not a luxury most of us

00:28:55.540 have in our jobs i don't think anymore but in mine i have that luxury and i i try to cherish it and use

00:29:05.700 it to the best of my ability in my writing to maybe give a different flavor to my writing than you might

00:29:11.780 find elsewhere so another thing you do you wrote it's like an addendum to your first book their fire

00:29:17.220 season at least about you listen to baseball games on the radio tell us about the virtues of listening to a

00:29:23.700 game via radio instead of watching it on tv yeah it's a habit for me that goes way back to my childhood

00:29:32.180 growing up on a farm in southern minnesota where you know we were often working in the fields uh in the

00:29:38.900 tractor or working in the livestock barns and we'd just have a game on the radio all summer long

00:29:47.140 so it felt kind of natural to uh revert to that habit when i'm up there on a mountain and

00:29:56.740 you know most of my connection to the outside world there happens aside from my vhf radio which is a you

00:30:05.220 know a forest service agency radio where we just talk business it happens via fm radio and am radio

00:30:13.860 because i can pick up signals from long distance so yeah over the years i made a habit of you know

00:30:20.260 tuning in games that i could find on the am radio often out of denver or phoenix the rockies the

00:30:26.420 diamondbacks and you know it kind of seems to fit with the throwback nature of the job you know yeah most

00:30:35.380 people who geek out on baseball are watching watching it on television maybe they have the mlb network

00:30:42.820 package or whatever and i certainly enjoy doing that from time to time but i have always liked having

00:30:49.860 a picture painted in words for me and imagining the game playing out in my head because it takes me back

00:31:00.580 to uh you know the late 70s in southern minnesota where i would stay up late with a radio under my pillow

00:31:08.660 listening to twins games on the west coast after i was supposed to be in bed just one of those

00:31:15.860 delightful uh kind of antiquey things about our culture that you can thankfully still do you can

00:31:24.580 still do yeah i've done i've listened to football games on the radio and yeah it's it's kind of it's

00:31:30.900 mentally or cognitively taxing because it's not something you have to you have to imagine

00:31:35.220 with your brain without seeing it what's going on based on what some guys describing it that can be

00:31:40.900 hard yeah i think it's more it's a more active mental experience than watching on tv tv seems to

00:31:50.100 allow you a passivity because it's just coming at you in images whereas if you're listening you've you've

00:31:57.380 got to create the images they're not they're not there right in front of your eyeballs so during this uh

00:32:03.460 you know these 16 years you've been watching fires have you ever seen a massive wildfire on the gila

00:32:11.060 yeah more than one really starting in about 2011 we started to see larger fires in 2012 i witnessed the

00:32:23.940 largest fire in new mexico state history which was more than 500 square miles almost 300 000 acres

00:32:33.460 burned up most of uh a very large mountain range called the muggy owns and then the very next year i had

00:32:41.220 an experience where a similar fire about half as large burned most of the mountain range where i work

00:32:50.580 and forced me to flee in a helicopter evacuation because it was clear that the fire was gonna burn over

00:32:58.580 my mountain and all around it so i saw it when it was a single tree struck by lightning putting up a

00:33:05.620 little puff of white smoke and then i watched from afar i was actually reassigned to a different tower

00:33:14.740 20 miles away for the rest of the season and and watched as it burned all around my mountain so we're

00:33:21.700 seeing yeah we're seeing mega fires now on a scale we have not seen before certainly in uh in recorded

00:33:30.020 history anyway what has been your biggest takeaway about life and wilderness working the fire watch all

00:33:36.660 these years i mean you're coming on two decades of doing this oh the biggest takeaway is probably that

00:33:43.940 the healthiest land is the land with the least human impact to it you know i the gila is a mix much of it

00:33:52.420 is grazed a lot of it has roads through it some of it has mining claims on it there are very small human

00:34:01.540 settlements here and there and yet a lot of it is roadless wilderness where you can only travel by horseback

00:34:11.620 or on foot and the further you go into that part of the landscape the wilder it is the healthier it

00:34:21.380 feels the more wildlife you experience and i just love being out there because it's it's so beautiful to

00:34:31.140 experience that web of life that's been existing there for millennia it's it can be a challenge to you

00:34:39.460 know come down off the mountain and drive back into a city like el paso where i live now and see what

00:34:45.300 we've done to the landscape there because um it's an urban planning catastrophe uh we're chewing ever

00:34:53.300 more into the desert with new housing developments and it's a stark contrast to the beauty and complexity

00:35:03.380 and biodiversity of a place like the center of the gila wilderness which feels you know probably about

00:35:11.940 like it did when it was inhabited by uh the muggy own native culture a thousand years ago and i love the 1.00

00:35:21.780 feeling of being in that landscape and i cherish it more and more all the time because it seems to be under

00:35:29.300 threat everywhere those type of landscapes if there's someone listening to this podcast and they're

00:35:35.140 they're hearing like they think i want to do that i want to be a fire watch are these jobs pretty

00:35:40.260 competitive like since there's so few of them now yeah they're extremely competitive you know as

00:35:46.260 mentioned i've been doing it for 16 years and i've found that i'm still the rookie in the gila because

00:35:53.700 all my uh colleagues started before me and have kept at it for in many cases decades i have one colleague

00:36:03.700 who uh the upcoming season will be her 37th year 37th or 38th i can't remember another colleague who's

00:36:12.100 been at it for 29 years so once people get these jobs they do find it hard to give up because they're

00:36:20.740 so precious and so groovy and there just aren't very many of them and the ones that do open up the

00:36:29.540 battle for them is sort of competitive and the forest service has a program where it privileges

00:36:36.820 those with military experience so you have hiring preference if you're you know coming out of a

00:36:43.140 military background so if you have that you have an advantage in those jobs that do open up but yeah

00:36:51.940 just because there's a few hundred of us and most of them are most of us are clinging to the jobs we

00:36:58.500 have it does make it really hard to break in well philip is there some place people can go to learn more

00:37:03.300 about your work yeah uh i have a website www.philipconnors.com has some links there to my

00:37:12.580 books and my other work including photos from my location so that that's a good place to start and

00:37:20.180 branch off from there well philip connors thanks for your time it's been a pleasure oh the pleasure

00:37:24.260 was mine thanks for having me on the podcast my guest it was philip connors he's the author of the

00:37:28.420 book fire season field notes from a wilderness lookout it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:37:32.580 everywhere you can find out more information about his work at philipconnors.com also check

00:37:36.500 out our show notes at aom.is firewatch where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into

00:37:41.060 this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com

00:37:58.020 where you find thousands of thorough well-researched articles about social skills physical fitness

00:38:01.940 barbell training personal finance just life in general and if you haven't done so already i'd

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00:38:15.940 next time this is brett mckay encouraging you to not only listen to the aom podcast but put what you've

00:38:20.020 learned into action

The Art of Manliness - January 14, 2019

#473： The Solitude of a Fire Watcher

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