Poet Amy Pearson Takes Open Book Club to a Lookout in the Bob Marshall

SEELEY LAKE - Amy Pearson, writer, teacher, photographer, poet, student of Buddhism and wilderness advocate will be reading from and discussing her recent book of poetry and photographs, "100 Days of Solitude" Saturday, March 17 at 7 p.m. at the Grizzly Claw Trading Company.

Pearson will include a power point presentation of her photographs taken from a lookout in the Bob Marshall Wilderness where she spent one summer as a fire lookout. Alpine Artisans Open Book Club sponsors this event. There is no charge and all are welcome.

This book of poetry is based on her time spent on the Mount Jumbo Lookout in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, one of the most remote lookouts in the lower 48. In it she offers a peek into a life of silence and introspection.

"The experience of a fire lookout is unique, difficult and magical. It offers time and space away from modern society and an opportunity to understand the simple needs we human beings have."

Pearson spent the summer of 2017 in the Morrell Mountain Lookout and was the person to call in the Rice Ridge Fire.

Her poems and photographs speak to a spectrum of moments from awe over the natural beauty and alarm over the proximity to grizzly bears to her constant companions – the wind, mountain goats and her own mind. "100 Days of Solitude" is a piece of art inspired by and created organically on the top of a mountain in the middle of the Montana wilderness. This is one of her haiku poems:

nowhere else

much as I

want to

walk off

this mountain

there's

nowhere else

I'd rather be

Pearson is an adjunct professor of English on the Humanities Department at Flathead Community College. Please join the Open Book Club on March 17 and meet this most interesting Montana woman as she shares her life and wilderness experience. Seeley-Swan High School poet Elizabeth Done will begin the evening reading one of her original poems.