By Jessica Silverman ’14
Philip Connors’s office is a small metal tree house on stilts, floating 10,000 feet above sea level. The tower overlooks trees and mountains and is miles from the nearest town. His only company is his dog.
Connors spends 100 days each summer as a fire lookout in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. He explained that he is “overwhelmed with vastness.”
On Monday, Connors shared his experiences with students during a multi-media presentation called, “Living With Fire in the West’s Wild Places.”
Connors left the Wall Street Journal 11 years ago, after experiencing the horrific events of 9/11. A friend, who served as a fire lookout in 2001, invited Synder to visit her in New Mexico. “After seeing the landscapes, I knew I couldn’t leave,” he said.
He showed the audience a picture of a log cabin among a sea of green, a picturesque mountain range in the background extending for miles.
“Most people don’t understand why I wanted to quit my New York City job for this,” he said. “But then I show them this picture.”
From his tower, Snyder can see 130 miles in all directions. He is in charge of spotting smoke, recording wind shifts, and sending out alerts for when lightning is near. He arrives each April to split firewood and clean up before he starts working full-time in the summer.
He refers to his work hours as “similar to any other hamster wheel of an eight-hour day,” but in the wilderness. “Most people would think of this as a prison cell, but I don’t,” he said.
He lives in a log cabin located near his office in the sky. “I have a short commute to work everyday,” he joked.
When he is not looking for fires, Connors spends time taking photographs and hiking the Gila.
“I have found evidence and remnants of people who inhabited this area between 850 and 1,200 years ago,” he said. “I take pictures of objects but always place them back where I found them.”
Andy Smith, chair of film and media studies and David Brandes, acting chair of civil and environmental engineering, co-teach Cultures of Nature in which Fire Season is required reading. They were responsible for bringing Connors to Lafayette.
“We wanted to bring him to campus because he does something that a lot of people don’t know much about,” said Smith, referring to Connors’s book as one of the most important nature writings since 9/11.
“It is always amazing to have a writer explain his or her creative process. I think his book is incredibly engaging, thoughtful, and well-written,” Smith said.
As technology advances and satellites become more prevalent, the number of fire lookouts in the U.S. has decreased from thousands to hundreds. Connors loves his job and does not plan to stop spending his summers in Gila anytime soon.
“Watching for fire and living in a fire-prone area teaches you that wilderness is not static and is always changing,” he said. “Things are happening out there that we can’t even see or describe yet.”