What was it that inspired you to share your life experiences up to this point?
I came to memoir almost accidentally, I wasn’t intending on writing a memoir when I set out to write the book that would eventually become Lookout. My first book had taken a journalistic approach to topics of gender and food security, and I found myself writing in the same way to tell the story of Alberta fire towers and wildfire. In an early draft, my agent Marilyn told me, “You’ve written two books here - one that’s personal, the other more of a historical, or political commentary. You have to decide: what kind of book do you want this to be?” This frustrated me, as I hadn’t yet come to appreciate the messy uncertainty that is a good first draft. Fortunately, this time coincided with a writer’s residency at the Banff Centre with author Kyo Maclear, where I met daily with a group of non-fiction writers, all women, many of whom were writing memoir. Reading their work gave me courage. It also made me realize, how could I honestly write about fire towers without examining what motivates one to do the job, to live alone in the bush for four to six months, and to come back to it, season after season? In the second draft, I dove headfirst into memoir. I tried to think from the reader’s point of view: what would they want to know about me? What stories are relevant to understanding this woman who chooses to live alone? And then the narrative parallels with environment, climate change, and wildfire presented themselves sort of naturally. I realized I could still write about those issues that matter to me, but through the lens of memoir, they emerged with a deeper intimacy and, perhaps, more immediacy. Being alone at the fire tower - surrounded by muskeg and black spruce and wild things - is a raw, honest, and sometimes animal experience. Now I look back and think it’s funny I thought I could write it from such an objective standpoint.
COVID-19 is still making a huge impact on our lives and is leaving many people isolated or finding themselves in solitude they’ve never experienced before. What are some tips for surviving solitude?
Honestly, as my fire season is fast approaching - I’ll be flying out in late April - I’m asking myself this same question. For context, I spent 5 months in 2020 alone at the tower. Typically, in the off-seasons from the lookout, I fill up on social experiences, knowing I’ll be alone the following fire season. Of course, due to COVID-19, that couldn’t happen for me this year. I spent much of the winter alone, writing, working from home, and socializing with people outdoors, and only if the weather allowed it. So even though this is my sixth fire season, I’m feeling intimidated by the coming season. “That’s a lot of isolation,” I find myself saying aloud often. But I have a number of healthy strategies in my toolkit: hobbies and tasks to keep me busy and ‘out of my head’, so to speak. I find that gardening and pottery, hands on activities, help with that. I began trail running in my fourth fire season. I’m not at all a natural runner, but I found that short bursts of physical activity really helped clear my mind and boost endorphins. I went off social media entirely in my first three fire seasons. I think most people would agree that social media can be highly triggering for anxiety and depression. On the other hand, it’s allowed me to stay in touch with other lookouts who I wouldn’t otherwise come to meet and know. So, it’s a balance, for sure. Listening to podcasts, or audiobooks is nice, too, because you can feel the intimacy of another’s voice. I’ve come to accept that some days will feel isolating and awful, while others I’ll be able to tap into that solitude. You learn to ride the high and the low at the fire tower. Lookouts are keen observers of weather and I’ve come to remind myself that “bad weather always passes”. Somedays you have to grit your teeth and bear down on the discomfort of an experience. When I’m feeling low at the lookout, I usually pick up the phone and call a friend to share my burden. Or, I go hang out with my dog. She can scent out joy so easily! Animals can be real teachers in mindfulness, in enduring solitude.
So many people are deciding to explore the world around them, something many people might not have done in the past. What would you tell those people who are just beginning to get in touch with nature?
Start small. You do not need to throw yourself into remote, far flung, wild expeditions. In fact, I think there’s more intimacy and potential for relationship building with the nature that lives closest to us, but perhaps, we’ve never had the time to notice before. Urban wildlife, for example, is fascinating to me. The birds and mammals that make homes in cities: magpies are a kind of symbol for hardiness in Edmonton, for example. Or, coyotes that dwell in green spaces. Nature is always trying to get close to us! Kyo Maclear wrote a beautiful book called Birds Art Life that details her journey into urban bird watching in Toronto. It’s great to plan weekend trips to nearby national, or provincial parks, but I think there’s more potential - and intimacy - in coming to notice and appreciate the wild beings that actually live with us. People often want to know about the bears, or moose, or wolves, at the fire tower. But in actuality, I spend most of my days with birds and insects. I’ve come to appreciate the wild biodiversity of spiders at the fire tower. One summer I spent hours watching crab spiders, who don’t spin webs, but change colour to hide themselves, wait and ambush their prey. When they hide inside of wild roses, they turn bright yellow, the same colour as the stamen. “Being in nature” doesn’t have to mean camping, hiking, or canoeing. It’s just about noticing and getting to know the wild beings around us.
How many years have you been working as a lookout, are you planning to continue after this year, and do you consider yourself a lifer?
The book stretches over four fire seasons, but I’m now heading into my sixth season as a fire tower lookout. My friends have stopped asking, “You’re going back again? Really?!” And now when I say to them, “This will be my last season,” they remind me, “Yeah, you say that every year.” I guess I must really love it. Being a lookout is more than a job, it’s a lifestyle, it’s a community. Many of the seasonal fire migrants - firefighters, lookouts, radio dispatchers, pilots - are some of my closest friends now. Anyone who has worked wildfire knows that it’s more than a job, but a kind of subculture that you are absorbed into. Also, from a practical standpoint, the job has been so helpful to my writing career. It provides some financial security. And the seasonal nature also frees up my off-seasons to write with focus. I don’t often write at the fire tower - there’s too much distraction: wildfires, or the threat of them, weather, wildlife. Mostly, I write during the winter, away from the tower. But working in the bush has been hard on my personal life and I guess the biggest sacrifice has been on personal relationships. I joke that the tower has been the worst thing to happen to my love life since 2016 (the year I started). It’s really a balance of needs, isn’t it, no matter what you’re doing. Maybe at some point, I’ll crave the intimacy of partnership more than that of solitude and nature. Or, maybe it will be possible to have both. So am I a lifer? Probably, some version of me, could grow old at the lookout. In a way, all lookouts are lifers, though. Once you get hooked on the job, it will never leave you, even long after you leave the fire tower.
What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Lookout?
I feel like writing this book taught me how to be a writer. It’s my second book, so maybe that sounds a little odd to people. But what I mean is that with this book I learned to embrace process and build a sustained writing practice. I learned about different narrative styles and structures. I realized that I needed and longed for writing mentors. As I mentioned above, Kyo Maclear was one of those key mentors in Lookout. After attending the residency in Banff with Kyo and the “Bower Birds”, the other women writers in my cohort, I realized that I didn’t want to stick to the journalist voice, but wanted to play and experiment with style. What would the concept of “space” - the enormity of physical space at the fire tower - look like on the page? How could I reflect that? I took more creative risks in the second half of the book, integrating bits of poetry, imagining how a column of smoke might surprise the reader - the same way it surprises the lookout when it pops up. Also, with my first book, I wanted to finish it in a single shot. I didn’t share early drafts with many people, I didn’t go looking for feedback from early readers beyond that of my agent and editor. Naively, I thought writers worked alone. I guess that was the biggest surprise of working at the fire tower, too, that I thought I’d be working in pure concentrated isolation. On Day One, a grandfatherly voice belonging to the tower man to my southeast called me up on the phone saying “Welcome to the neighbourhood,” and I soon discovered that I was surrounded by a community of lookouts, some of whom would become dear, dear friends. I shared early drafts of Lookout with so many friends and wildfire colleagues and the more I shared it, the less scary it felt to receive feedback and criticism. Indubitably, my early readers helped to shape Lookout into the story it is today.
Finally, Lookout is a love story and the old journalist in me scoffed that I never thought I’d waste my time writing a love story! But personal stories are political stories. And I do think the personal voice transports readers into the “root of the root” (to quote Pablo Neruda). It’s easy to look at memoir as a kind of “soft writing”, but have we ever craved vulnerability more than we do these days? I had to summon a different kind of bravery to face my story on the page, day after day, draft after draft, to write this book. There was nothing “soft” about that process, let me assure you!
Now that you’ve written two books, I have to ask, will there be another book from you in the future?
Can I say I’m hooked on book writing? I’ve never been less interested in writing an article, or essay, than I am today. I like the potential - the space - of a book structure to explore story and theme. It’s also a bit of a puzzle. Trying to figure out how to organize story and information, I quite like that about working at book length, there are so many moving pieces! I am currently working on a non-fiction book that blends science and memoir with a dash of speculative writing. This is for my thesis for my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. I’m working with author/professor, John Vigna, on this project, currently trying to make sense of a preliminary draft. The book is focused on my relationship with black bears in northern Alberta. It’s exploring parallel themes of fear of bears/fear of being a woman, patriarchy/speciesism, art and desire. It’s about learning how to be more animal, tap into new languages, and de-centre myself from my worldview. It’s a kind of ode to bears, but moreover, a reflection on what it means to be human.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors who are trying to navigate the publishing world?
Read Annie Dillard’s book, The Writing Life, which is full of good advice - the conceptual, metaphorical kind, anyway. I like the anecdote of learning how to aim not for the piece of wood, but for the chopping block. To me, it means, focus on building a writing practice versus fixating on the end result - a published book. As an emerging writer, the best piece of advice I ever received was to “make friends with editors”. The relationship between the writer-editor is a sacred one. Be open to learning from editors - their feedback will likely make you a better writer. It’s in the editorial process that we can grow as writers, look at our work more objectively, and try to see what the editor can see from the outside looking in. Also, build a community of other writers, editors, and art makers. There’s no shortage of reasons in this capitalist world to not write, or make art. Fellow artists remind us what’s at stake, why we create, support us, help us access available resources - grants, fellowships, funding opportunities - and share in the process of art making. We are stronger together!
What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?
An impossible question as books are a bit like road maps to help you navigate different terrain. But the works that inspired Lookout, at various stages, include Kyo Maclear’s Birds, Art, Life, Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise, Rebecca Solnit’s A Fieldguide to Getting Lost, and pretty much any essay by Annie Dillard. Also, I drew a lot of courage from Jan Redford’s memoir, End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood, as she writes so vulnerably about the unravelling of her relationship. Finally, some point out the parallels between Lookout and Wild by Cheryl Strayed - and, yes, of course, that book has been hugely influential in my life and writing career.
Lastly, who or what is your inspiration when it comes to writing and why?
My grandfather John Moyles was a writer, wood carver, teacher, and storyteller. He lived a creative life, a life of story and adventure, of mischief and mistakes. He taught me to look for creativity and story every which way, from conversations with people, from lived experiences, from the everyday, from birds and nature and even magical, mythical creatures. He was a playful man who lived a very full life and was spinning stories and fun-spirited mischief right up until his death. If I could live a writing life like that it would be a very good life, indeed.
