Writer Philip Connors visits an old tradition with new book

For readers and fans of local writer Philip Connors, the writer has taken a “half departure,” with his new book, “The Mountain Knows the Mountain—A Fire Watch Diary.”

Connors is known for his nature writing related memoirs set in the Gila National Forest. He has been a fire watcher in the Gila for decades and has mused about fire, loss and grief and the fight to save the Gila River in multiple books.

Now he has published a hybrid form of poetry, called “The Mountain Knows the Mountain—A Fire Watch Diary,” published by University of New Mexico Press. Connors called it a “half departure” from his previous work because it is still a book about living in the Gila National Forest for close to half a year.

“I’m still trained on an experience that will be familiar to readers of my previous books,” he said.

What shifted Connors to writing poetry had to do with a health situation. He said that at the end of 2015 he had to have surgery. During recuperation in 2016, he was in considerable pain. He said it impacted his ability to concentrate and read. It also meant he could not work the 2016 fire season at his lookout tower in the Gila Forest.

“I was trapped inside my own experience,” Connors said.

A friend sent him a book of haiku poetry called “The Essential Haiku,” edited by Robert Haas, in the hopes that it would bring Connors some solace.

It did. Connors said that, slowly, he was able to read the book and regain his ability to concentrate on something else besides his pain. He also fell in love with the form.

Haiku contains three lines with a total of 17 syllables.

“There is no aspect of life haiku can’t grapple with, including pain,” he said.

Connors’ book launch began on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at a bookstore in Brooklyn, New York. He is holding readings around New Mexico with one in Hillsboro at 5 p.m. on Monday, September 22, 2025, at Rio Abajo Rio. He will have other readings in Santa Fe and Albuquerque later in the fall.

Connors said his book is not strictly haiku but a hybrid form called haibun, which is a Japanese literature tradition dating back to the 17th century.

That makes “The Mountain Knows the Mountain—A Fire Watch Diary,” a diary of Connors’ fire season back in the Gila National Forest in 2017 interspersed with haiku forms.

In keeping with the tradition of haibun, Connors also incorporated writing from his partner, Mónica Ortiz Uribe, and from his friend the late editor and publisher Bobby Byrd. 

Connors said that in the Global North tradition of literature, there is “the myth of the solitary genius.

“I really wanted to honor the communal origins of haiku,” he said.

He said that Ortiz Uribe and he would both write diary entries about their day together in the Gila and, sometimes, Ortiz Uribe’s description of that day was better than his so he used her diary description instead of mixed the two.

He said Byrd wrote an essay about publishing Connors third book, called “Song for the River,” about three Silver City teenagers who died in a plane crash in 2014 while collecting data from a forest fire. So Connors incorporated that. He also made drawings of his own for the book which are also included in the book.

“These are ways of tipping my cap to the masters of the form and trying to update the form with some of the things they did with it,” he said.