On Thursday, Banff announced that Fire Season in its . Written by , who quit his job at The Wall Street Journal to work on a fire lookout for eight seasons, the book quickly gained an impressive slate of when it was released earlier this year. In our May issue, Bruce Barcott offered his opinion. “In short, it's one of the best books to come out of a government gig since Ed Abbey turned a ranger's wage into Desert Solitaire,” he said.
Banff gave the book its Grand Jury Prize for a number of reasons.
“The winner of the Grand Jury Prize was for all three of us judges the
outstanding book of the 2012 Banff Mountain Book Competition. Nothing
else came close in terms of literary quality, human oddity, and that
indefinable element of surprise present in all the very best writing. We
loved this book,” the judges wrotes. “The persona, the character as it comes through in his
book of the author, his humor and odd sagacity, his sharp and lucid
gift of natural observation, the fascinating perspective he gives on the
ecology of wildfire, charmed and informed us. Also, since he went to
school in Missoula, he can almost be claimed as Canadian, Montana being
more like here than down there. Of all this year鈥檚 authors, here鈥檚 the
one with whom we felt we鈥檇 most like to share a beer.”
“His book will surely be accepted into the outdoor and environmental literary canon as one to be ranked with Aldo Leopold鈥檚 Sand County Almanac and ornery old Ed Abbey鈥檚 Desert Solitaire,” they continued. “It鈥檚 the account of a former Wall Street Journal writer鈥檚 sojourns through several summers at a fire-lookout post in the Gila Wilderness Area of southwest New Mexico: If there's a better job anywhere on the planet, I'd like to know what it is.”
If you still need another opinion, consider this one from 国产吃瓜黑料 senior editor Grayson Schaffer: “The gushing, here, over Philip Connors's book is well deserved,” he said on . “Must read.”
I've included the other winners below. Click on the award to read feedback from the Banff Mountain Book Competition Jury, and on the title to buy the book.
, by Gordon Stainforth
, by Richard Grant
, by Phil Borges
, by Marc Bourdon
, by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan
, by Fred Beckey
聽鈥擩oe Spring