Living With Fire in the West's Wild Places

A decade ago, author Philip Connors left his job at the Wall Street Journal to work as a lookout in a remote fire tower high above the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, one of the most fire-prone landscapes in America. Every summer since 2002, he's been a privileged witness to the dramas of weather and wild creatures in a place designated as the world's first wilderness area, in 1924. He will offer a multimedia presentation on his days and nights alone above 10,000 feet, and a visual tour of the cycles of life and death in an American forest, cycles dictated in large part by free-burning wildfire.