Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References
Basic Information:
Author:
Philip Connors
Edition:
epub on Overdrive from the San Francisco Public Library
Publisher:
Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN:
9781941026915
Start
Date: October 8, 2019
Read
Date: October 16, 2019
246
pages
Genre:
Biography, Essay
Language
Warning: Medium
Rated
Overall: 3½ out of 5
Synopsis:
Essentially
this is five essays bound together by the theme of loss, with the
solitude of being a fire lookout and the soothing of a wild river
being the healing agents.
Cast of Characters:
- Phillip Connors-author, fire lookout
- Swede-a backcountry personality who lived way out of the way.
- John-A fellow lookout who died when his horse fell on him
- Ella Jaz-A high school student who was an organizer of a resistance movement to a dam being built on the Gila River. She died in an airplane crash.
- Ella Myers-high school student. Died in an airplane crash
- Michael Mahl-high school student. Died in an airplane crash
- Teresa-A retired Forest Service employee, including being a lookout. Wife of John. Knew country as well as anyone could.
- Raz-a seventy year old lookout. Partner with Sara
- Sara-lookout and partner to Raz
- Dr. Hocha-Pilot of the plane which crashed-died in the crash
Expectations:
- How come do I want to read this book: I had read his first book, Fire Season and was favorably impressed. So I felt it would be worthwhile reading his next book.
- What do I think I will get out of it? I do not know
Thoughts:
A
Prayer to the Raven
The
first line says how this book will be: After
illness and divorce did a number on my body and soul, after wildfires
burned the mountains and an airplane fell from the sky, after a horse
collapsed on my friend and two hip surgeries laid me up for the
better part of a year--loss piled on loss, pain layered over pain--I
found I wanted nothing so much as to be near moving water..
It is a book about the personal pain Connors has, interspersed with
other thoughts about the Gila River area.
The
mountain which Connor’s lookout was on was part of a forest fire.
He notes what it is like to see what you hold dear being burnt. But
he also says that this is a lesson
in transience and renewal.
Ashes do not stay, water and wind will wash them away, leaving
ground for newness to grow. I can say this too as the lookout I
volunteer at was at the edge of the Rough Fire. Within a year, there
was green grass and shrubs coming up. Also the springs in the area
were flowing. There was still enough fuel at a 45 acre fire took off
a year after the Rough Fire.
Interesting
statement:
I have found it useful, for the sake of one’s private morale, to
have at least one friend who is not a better human than you are.
I suspect only one is enough. Also that one should not try to reform
the person, just accept the friendship. Swede’s redeeming factor is
that he
understood and honored the beauty of flowing water in an arid land.
There is something to be said when a person knows what is important.
I also like the word honored. It says to me that there is something
the person recognizes that is above himself.
Connors
says that he does not pray.
A
Hummingbird’s Kiss
Connors
points out that an occupied fire lookout is also a residence. Teresa
would not climb until she had permission to enter. Connors points out
that at times a lookout will perform their duties with an absence of
clothing. His description sent me laughing. Sometimes a tourist
would go up and be informed by John that he was completing important
paperwork and he would call them up when he had completed it-which
was a significant stretch.
Seems
like all over the US, lookouts have their hummingbird feeders.
See
Gary Synder’s poem The
Lookout.
Connors only quotes the first half which talks about lookout scanning
the horizon for smokes and sending fire fighters out scurrying to put
out the fire. But the interesting part is that the firefighters can
render the lookout useless just by toggling a switch to off.
When
Connors takes over Signal Peak Lookout and goes in service, he feels
it a sacrilege being at another person’s lookout, even though John
is dead. He also talks about the morning chorus of lookouts going
into service. It seems like once one goes into service, the rest of
us join right in, within minutes of each other.
Unconditional
love: grace in the face of the unbearable.
Noted about John when his lover was dying and he had to care for her.
He
gives a description of a lookout-more like someone who works it full
time: pyromaniacal monk. Feels like as the forest is drying, a
lookout is officiating at funeral pyre for the forest. Lookouts tend
to look for
solitude and adventure, the romance of the wild mountains, and a
taste of the sublime. Also
they have a view of both the wilderness and of fire which cannot be
beaten. He goes on and talks how lookouts have to be a bit goofy,
they had
lucked into a lineage of mountain mystics and lone rangers. ..He
goes on to say that when a person had been at a lookout for awhile,
they could read the lay of the land and understand weather patterns
as well as understand animal migrations.
Connors
puts in that an experienced lookouts know the territory. They can
guide a group of non-locals into a place. But he does get pretty
defensive about what technology will do for them.
A
price to be paid for knowing and loving an area: 1) to watch it being
destroyed, as in a large fire; 2) to come back to see the results of
the destruction. But there is also watching it be reborn again.
Friendship:
a
man I could tell anything and be met with a voice of understanding
and compassion.
Interesting
question, How’s
your soul?
As
a forest lookout, our office is nicer than almost any other office I
have worked in. Thanks Connors for saying this.
Leading
you through a bit of fire forensics. He tells us about some
indicators investigators look for when they study a fire. Such as:
- Shape of a burnt leaf
- Green leaves curl that they point to the oncoming heat
- Angle of the car on standing tree strunks-the burn will be higher than the angle of the slope
- Grass-advancing fire burns all but the base of the stem. So seed heads generally point in the direction the fire came.
- In a low intensity fire, the fire will burn only one side of a log or tree. So the unburnt is facing away from the origin.
With
this they are able to see the approximate place of origin.
Connors
knew the three high school students who died in the airplane crash.
But he was able to keep his distance, until his fellow lookout and
friend died when his horse rolled over on top of him. Connors says
that if
I had wanted distance from death, death had other ideas.
Birthday
for the Next Forest
Love
the term clinically
pyromaniacal.
While you never wish for a fire, I do love the excitement of spotting
a smoke and calling it in. And you always hope that if there is a
fire that you spot it and not someone else, particularly if it is in
your area.
The
point of the work [being
a fire lookout]
is early detection: the sooner you spot a fire, the more options you
give firefighters to manage it.
Connors
reminds us of the awe which one has when looking at a fire,
particularly a large one. It is also a natural occurrence which has
happened in the past and will happen in the future.
To
a writer, a fire lookout is a natural place. Quiet, away from
everyone with mostly an easy gig-look for any smoke in your area and
keep in radio contact while keeping an eye on the weather conditions.
Not challenging. Connors wanted to do it at least well enough to be
asked back.
For
some forms of life, …., wildfire signaled the end of the dance. For
others it represented the first notes of a new song.
He calls this ecological succession.
Then
to speak of the demands on a conscientious lookout is that you have
to be particular to the details: Radio
frequencies, personnel call signs, GPS coordinates, fire azimuths,
fire legals, fire acreages, lightning-activity levels, Haines
indices, maximum wind gusts, the precise details of crew-supply
orders, military time to the minute of any noteworthy event, anywhere
on your turf…
Thanks Phillip for reminding me of this.
Connors
is walking back to his lookout after a big fire. He feels like it is
a familiar
place made newly strange.
I like this phrase. Both melancholy and exciting. Melancholy because
it no longer is the place you remember. Exciting, because it is new.
He
talks about the fact that he is in a lookout in a wilderness-a dream
place. But then realizes it is too late to prevent catastrophic
fires.
The
Navel of the World
It
took awhile for Connors to venture into the burn area surrounding
John’s lookout, Signal Peak. There were certain emotions Connors
was wary of facing. When he does, he goes to the site of John’s
death where the remains of his horse was still there. He notes that
the birds have been feasting on horse flesh. He notes that the birds
when they soar are lazy-looking
but never not vigilant, they reminded me of lookouts with wings.
I had never thought of myself as a volunteer vulture.
Connors
talks of the memories of John. But Connors most basic thought was the
voice on the radio and the proximity they had to each other in the
lookout. His Osborne Fire Finder was not right until it lined up
Signal Peak. We all need to have that kind of a person.
The
longer you keep the job[fire
lookout]
the more your identity becomes entwined with that mountain.
Interesting statement about the transformation of the mind. I know I
call Delilah “my lookout”, being very possessive. This is even
though I am only there 15 days a year, it has become part of my
psyche. Maybe because a person spends so much time just looking and
thinking. Connors goes on and says that when we communicate on the
radio it is the name of the peak or place, rather than who we are.
There are practical reasons for this. You know the locality, you do
not need to keep track of people and where they are. But Connors
brings in thoughts of relationship with the place. A sense of
honoring the local. There is a merging of personalities. I am not
sure I would go that far. When Connors was staffing his friend John’s
lookout, it was hard for him to say Signal Peak rather than his own,
both because it was John’s identity and not his own.
Sharing
builds trust.
What
to do with John’s ashes? John’s girlfriend has him going to his
favorite places and makes arrangements for it.
John
stayed in Connors mind and Connors realized that the relationship he
had with John was more complex than what he thought it was. It was
not just a fellow lookout who passed, but somebody who knew him.
Connors quotes Rebecca Solnit (maybe in Call
Them by Their True Names: American Crises)
about those
places of unknowing.
That seems to be where Connors is, exploring those thoughts and times
when there was more depth to the relationship which he did not
understand. It is forcing him to explore himself, the death of his
brother and his divorce and all those other unpleasantries.
He
goes on and talks about the plane crash which killed the pilot and
the three students. He says that experiential education has inherent
risk. Things happen-that is the idea of experience otherwise what is
the use of the experience if we are in a cocoon? (my question). Most
experiences worth having risk something…
The
three high school students were working to prevent a dam being built
across the Gila River. One expert noted that We
don’t have a shortage of water, we have an excess of money
encouraging us to do something stupid.
A basic philosophy difference, stated in a bit of hyperbole is to
look at a river as an undersized
ditch [which
can be] … repurposed
for “wiser use” than simply letting a river go about the business
of being a river.
Or do you look at a river being something which is majestic in its
own right, affecting other things real and sometimes in the
imagination?
Connors
found that being alone, grieving, was a trap. Sometimes the dead are
more alive in one's mind than when they were alive, or even the
currently living.
Wendell
Berry (Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food): To
farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures,
animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately
enlarges the context of human work.
I think Connors liked the quote and put it in. I do not think it
strengthens what Connors is trying to say.
Connors
notes that his life may be explained by fire
and water.
This was said while going down the Gila in a raft with his future
wife.
Jean,
another lookout has been given some of John’s ashes for her
mountain-note the her
mountain.
She was having a hard time knowing what to do and when to do it. But
then she realized that she would know what to do and when to do it
when the right time came.
A
Song for the River
...in
our restless human quest to make meaning, sometimes all we have to do
is pay attention. Meaning will be made for us.
Nothing more to be said.
He
notes that at least in the Southwest, there is no place more lush and
active than a burn scar in recovery. Around my area, the Rough Fire
burnt a huge section of the forest. The next year, we were able to
see springs and water flowing which was sucked up by shrubs and
grasses before they could leave its source.
Connors
talks about one of the families who child died in the plane crash. He
notes that their religion was not enough to keep them with the
church. So they discovered
that their true church, the place where they made contact with the
holy, was in the wild Gila.
He also talks about an honest
reckoning with tragedy.
I can see where when they look to a church, and I do not know what
kind of church it is, that they would see coldness their. I suspect
if left with my childhood church and this kind of tragedy happened,
that might be my reaction as well. I wonder about Connors wording in
the honest
reckoning.
Does he mean that if they did not break from their religion, they
would not have had something honest? But what would have happened if
they were driven deeper into their religion? Also is he saying there
is something spiritual about a wild river? I can understand somewhat
he is saying. When I go to the mountains, I feel more spiritually
alive their than in the ordinary bustle of the city. Still, it is not
the hard granite of the mountain where I feel the spirituality, it is
that they beauty there draws me closer to my creator, my God. Is that
what he is saying with the wild river comment? I do not know, I do
not think so. Sounds more pantheistic. Later on he talks about
intimacy
with the nonhuman,
meaning the wild lands, particularly the river. Does he not know that
the wild will never be merciful? It only knows force-the force of
physics and biology.
Catechism
for a Fire Lookout
Like
the title says, this is more of a series of quotes, expressing what
Phillip Connors views the proper tempermeant of a fire lookout is.
Below are the ones I found meaningful.
It
doesn’t take much in the way of body and mind to be a lookout. It’s
mostly soul.
Norman Maclean
I
am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.
Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
Aldo Leopold
Often
the mountain gives itself most completely when I have nodestination,
when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be
with the mountain as one visits a fried.
Nan Shepherd
Thank
God, they cannot cut down the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
In
order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on
occasion.
Albert Camus
I
wonder why it was the places are so much lovelier when one is alone.
Daphne du Maurier
To
have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have
never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never
known anyone.
Joseph Wood Krutch
To
be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern
world.
Anthony Burgess
There
is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to
a question.
Thomas Merton
It
takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much
doing nothing, really doing nothing. Gertrude
Stein
Some
people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me, they are
proof of the fact that there is healing.
Linda Hogan
Evaluation:
I
am a sucker for a variety of kinds of books. One of them is when they
are about fire lookouts. Philip Connors book Fire
Season
captured me. I was hoping that A
Song for the River
would be a return to the them. Connors does use fire lookouts as a
back drop for what he wants to write up, but this is not a story particularly about lookouts. His theme is loss.
He
lays that out right from the start: After
illness and divorce did a number on my body and soul, after wildfires
burned the mountains and an airplane fell from the sky, after a horse
collapsed on my friend and two hip surgeries laid me up for the
better part of a year--loss piled on loss, pain layered over pain--I
found I wanted nothing so much as to be near moving water.
Connors works through his losses, some with the aide of being alone
in a fire lookout, some with being on or around the Gila River, some
with the aide of his future wife, and others times with friends or
friends of friends.
At
the end, he has the Catechism
for a Fire Lookout,
which is a series of quotes on solitude. But he quotes Linda Hogan,
saying: Some
people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me, they are
proof of the fact that there is healing.
This is appropriate as the way he heals.
This
is a book which is similarly written as Fire
Season,
but different. If you are expecting the same, you may be
disappointed. Still it is well written and worth the read. If you are
a fire lookout, you will probably resonant the most with the second
chapter.
Notes from my book group:
Many
of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.
- Why the title of A Song for the River?
- Did the ending seem fitting? Satisfying? Predictable?
- Which character was the most convincing? Least?
- Which character did you identify with?
- Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
- In what context was religion talked about in this book?
- Was there anybody you would consider religious?
- How did they show it?
- Was the book overtly religious?
- How did it affect the books story?
- Why do you think the author wrote this book?
- What would you ask the author if you had a chance?
- What “take aways” did you have from this book?
- What central ideas does the author present?
- Are there solutions which the author presents?
- Do they seem workable? Practicable?
- How would you implement them?
- Describe the culture talked about in the book.
- How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?
- What economic or political situations are described?
- Does the author examine economics and politics, family traditions, the arts, religious beliefs, language or food?
- How did this book affect your view of the world?
- Of how God is viewed?
- What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
- Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
- What was memorable?
New Words:
- Mycologist (1): the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection.
- Palimpsest (2): a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
- Anthropocene (2): the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
- Sinecure (2): a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit.
- Catastrophizing (3): an irrational thought a lot of us have in believing that something is far worse than it actually is
- Holocene (4): relating to or denoting the present epoch, which is the second epoch in the Quaternary period and followed the Pleistocene
- Phantasmagorical (4): having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination. having the appearance of an optical illusion, especially one produced by a magic lantern. changing or shifting, as a scene made up of many elements.
- Hueco (5): depending on where the word is used-as in which country, it can mean: hollow, gay, or clueless
- The Lookouts by Gary Snyder (a poem)
- Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
- Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks
- The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts
Good Quotes:
- First Line: After illness and divorce did a number on my body and soul, after wildfires burned the mountains and an airplane fell from the sky, after a horse collapsed on my friend and two hip surgeries laid me up for the better part of a year--loss piled on loss, pain layered over pain--I found I wanted nothing so much as to be near moving water.
- Last Line: Silent, unopposed, brooding, forever.
- I have found it useful, for the sake of one’s private morale, to have at least one friend who is not a better human than you are. Chp 1-A Prayer to the Raven
- Unconditional love: grace in the face of the unbearable. Chp 2-A Hummingbird’s Kiss
- One of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds. Aldo Leopold, Round River, pg 165
- How’s your soul? Chp 2-A Hummingbird’s Kiss
- Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled amid the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise, he never would have been able to find those words. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Attention is the beginning of devotion. Mary Oliver, Upstream
- For some forms of life, …., wildfire signaled the end of the dance. For others it represented the first notes of a new song. Chp 3-Birthday for the Next Forest
- A big fire is just the birthday for the next forest. It will be green again before long. Dennis, Phillip Connors supervisor, Chp 3-Birthday for the Next Forest
- Most experiences worth having risk something… Chp 4-The Navel of the World
- To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Wendell Berry in Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food
- ...in our restless human quest to make meaning, sometimes all we have to do is pay attention. Meaning will be made for us. Chp 5 - A Song for the River
- It doesn’t take much in the way of body and mind to be a lookout. It’s mostly soul. Norman Maclean, USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky
- I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map? Aldo Leopold, Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons, pg 157-158
- Often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have nodestination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a fried. Nan Shepherd. The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
- Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds. Henry David Thoreau. The Journal: 1837-1861, pg 106
- In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, The Minotaur
- I wonder why it was the places are so much lovelier when one is alone. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
- To have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never known anyone. Joseph Wood Krutch, The Desert Year
- To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence
- It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography
- Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me, they are proof of the fact that there is healing. Linda Hogan, Solar Storms
- A Prayer to the Raven
- A Hummingbird’s Kiss
- Birthday for the Next Forest
- The Navel of the World
- A Song for the River
- Catechism for a Fire Lookout
References:
- Author's Web Site
- Wikipedia-Author
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- Los Angeles Times Review
- Kirkus Review
-
- Reporting on settlement on the plane crash
- A Heart, A Soul, and A Voice film trailer
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