Philip Connors on The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary

“Find in these pages profound beauty, deep comfort, and vexing disquiet. Ask yourself some of the questions Connors keeps asking. Then walk out of the house to some perfect, inscrutable run of nature and fall in love.”

— Gary Ferguson

Philip Connors is a fire lookout, essayist, and author of four books. A former journalist at the Wall Street Journal, Connors has been a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest for over twenty years. In our conversation today we focus on his latest book, The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary, the life of a fire lookout, attention and dialogue with place, and I reignite the question I asked him at live reading that has stirred my interior soup for months. I heartily recommend all of Philip Connors’ books, The Mountain Knows the Mountain is my favorite.

Visit Philip Connors at philipconnors.com

Episode Show Notes Books by Philip Connors

• The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary
• A Song for the River
• All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found
• Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout

Resources & People Mentioned

• Gila National Forest
• Fidelity by Wendell Berry
• Thomas Merton
• Zen Buddhism
• Edward Abbey
• Annie Dillard
• Henry David Thoreau
• Kobayashi Issa
• A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
• Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings by Matsuo Bashō
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• Bookworks
• Aldo Leopold
• Barry Lopez
• Gary Snyder
• Monica Ortiz Uribe
• Bobby Byrd

Drink Recommended

• coffee

Photo pulled from philipconnors.com
Links to book purchases give a kickback to a local New Mexican bookstore and Contemplify