![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The watchtower manned by Connors is one of only three in the Gila wilderness that cannot be reached by a Forest Service road. Forest Service’s long-standing policy to snuff out every wildfire, no matter how small. The result of Connors’s “waiting and watching” - and writing, of course - is an engaging and highly readable mix of wilderness reflection, ode to solitude, and reasoned assault on forestry techniques: specifically, the U.S. But with the surroundings inclining him to take the long view, he quickly cultivated a reverence for a place and a lifestyle that few of us will ever get to experience: “Once you struggle through that swamp of monotony where time bogs down in excruciating ticks from your wristwatch,” he writes, “it becomes possible to break through to a state of equilibrium, to reach a kind of waiting and watching that verges on the holy.” Freed from the bustle of civilization, Connors initially regarded life in the tower as one of tedium. ![]()
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