Firewatch and the Contemplative Call of Grief

Your Friend Joel
Jan 13, 2024
6 min read

(this week I am somewhat laid-low, recovering from "resection surgery" which continues to come to mind as "resuscitation" or "resurrection" surgery, but in plain-speak, surgery to remove a tumour (what remains of it, after 5 weeks of radiation therapy) from my right thigh. I am doing well, a bit wobbly of foot, but in good spirits, and resting by way of sitting and lying about, with movies, books and in this instance, video games)

A watch tower that looks out over a forested expanse, with yellow grass and large stones — 2016 Firewatch by Camp Santo

When I was in the last year of my high school studies I was pretty enamoured by my obsession with video games. It was mostly the usual young persons taking to distraction and entertainment, immersive worlds and larger-than-life characters. Once I was approaching the final year where I had some more freedom to choose the courses I would take (according to parental advisors the pressure was to determine my pathway into adulthood), I wanted to get into game design.

Unfortunately, I was told getting into computer programming meant taking as many maths courses as were available to me. I did, and that is quite specifically where my interest in video game design ended, with a few barely-passing grades in Physics, Algebra, Calculus and other nightmarish worlds of logical puzzling.

If I had more wisdom at the time I would have noted that I excelled most in my creative writing course and that the aspects that drew me into the games I enjoyed were their emotionally rich stories, great tragedies full of worlds in crises.

I might have been 15 but already my existential concerns and social isolations were looking for modes of expression, and these fantasy characters were experiencing all the inarticulate love and loss that was mounting in my mind.

Several years ago a coworker mentioned a game they were playing revolving around a fire watch. By this point in my life, I had generally abandoned most video games, other than the occasional nostalgic dabble, that usually lasted for one fun weekend before returning to my usual interests of film, music and books.

Well, the morning of my surgery I got a notification that the game Firewatch was on for a dramatic sale price, well within my student budget, so I made the plunge.

When my friend mentioned the game to me, I had recently devoured a biography called Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout. It comes in a long line of imaginative non-fiction exploring the modern-day hermits. Similar, in a sense, to our romanticism around lighthouse keepers, we imagine a rugged loner, abandoning the mess of the modern marketplace for the more natural acceptance of the land.

Like many folks who might have the same itch, while I read the book, I did some online research for job listings, imagining myself writing my best-selling memoir while overlooking miles of woods. (forgetting, of course, my insistence on a daily shower, reliance on LTE networks and streaming service subscriptions) In this fantasy, I am the most resilient and tragically romantic version of myself. (This self exists, mind you. I have spent a few solo weekends at a hermitage (with a "solar shower" as an aid against my modern frailties) and fared reasonably well).

One must assume there is something intrinsic for us folks that calls for this kind of thing. (You're reading this now with either apprehensive horror or strange attraction). In some of us, it manifests in the camper's itch, who find themselves popping open Google Maps on occasion and drifting towards the vast green of Algonquin Park. Maybe that's you.

Mine takes on a bit of a stronger drive, and easily once or twice a year I suddenly feel ashamed of all the books that sleep unread on my shelf, or the records that clutter up my "collection" and find myself wanting to sell it all and head into "the woods". I excitedly look up what silent retreats are being offered at the local Jesuit centre, or fantasize about offers online for writers-in-residence to take a few weeks to disappear into a cabin or cottage.

I can now add to that list, at a much more reasonable price, playing a game called Firewatch.

It is a basic, point-and-click type game (a genre likely called something more sophisticated to the modern gamer) where you embody a character who has taken a job in isolation to perhaps get the geographical and emotional distance to find some peace with his own complicated tragedy. I'll try not to spoil the story, as it is a wonderfully immersive and resonant one.

Safe to say, there's something in most of us who might be drawn in who will immediately feel at home in the sound of constant wind, the vast, beautiful and stark scenery, and the loss of time that we contemplatives really long for. You can really feel it. It's lonely, but in a way that not only recognizes your loneliness but accepts it with familiarity. That is what makes this game, and the experience it offers, so enticing and familiar.

What is it about grief that makes us feel out of place in normal society? Life, at least in the Western framing of the thing, is usually comprised of various sets of social and professional ladders. We jump from one to the other, be it in school, work or hobby. In each we compare our ability to advance: developing a business, acquiring a skill, winning a mate, growing a family, planning vacations, travelling, acquiring and personalizing a home, there are the goods we acquire: a car, various outfits, the tools and toys of our hobby worlds. This is just the list that brainstorms off the top of my head.

When tragedy or suffering disrupts our lives this list becomes alien and meaningless to our experience. To go to a party, to see friends, is to be asked about how we're faring along these lists, and though we might have something to share, it seems foolish. When love is lost, when a job ends, when sickness disfigures, we feel like it is only socially acceptable to report our next attempt at the stuff. "Oh, I'm looking into this new career option." "I'm hitting the dating scene and I've met some wonderful potential partners!" "I should be completely cured by spring and will be ready to date, work, and go back to school!"

But grief grounds our flights and makes demands on our thinking that require the present to fill our vision. It questions who we are, and why we are doing what we are doing. It demands our time and reflection.

So to private spaces we go, be it the familiar four walls of our bedroom, or high above it all in a lookout tower.

The game immerses with narrative at the get, warmly framed. It is a simple tale of career, relationship and ambition complicated quickly. Though it is specific, it is universally resonant. Every life begins in an ambitious trajectory, filling out our own personal (or assigned) "what will you do with your life" application.

If you live honestly for any length of time, something comes along that humbles the straight secure pathway forward, adding all sorts of side quests or obscuring your destination altogether.

In times such as those, we are invited to embrace the spaciousness of the in-between. And often, it is a wilderness that must be traversed alone. I find myself comforted there, finding myself finally away from the overly involved advice of others, the noise of competitive advances up the ladders of life, and can find myself (a strange thing I seem to be quite in the habit of losing).

With Firewatch, loneliness is combatted with a fellow watcher in another tower. With this company are some romantic hints that might feel a bit idealized, but I suppose that is another part of the human need. We seek to find company in our loneliness, we long to be recognized in our grief. The story feels rich enough even if it is still a bit idealistically imagined. Eventually, a bit of mystery and intrigue propels the "story" of the game along. I think those are added benefits and are mostly effective because the characters and the space feel so rich that we are fully engaged as the story progresses.

I'm sure many would feel similarly as I, in finding my enjoyment mostly in the time spent in the wind and the woods. Here the burdens we carry feel communally shared. Where the wild world looks on, holds space and walks with us.

Is this a game review? Maybe. Mostly it is a reflection on the things that spring forth in me from it. The best art is the kind of work that helps us articulate something with the familiarity that says "I have always felt this way but didn't realize it until now." So if you have a bit of a hermit in you, spend a few hours in the fire watch tower. It won't ask who you're seeing, what the world pays you to produce, or how much longer you have in your degree.

I'm off to my watch, until next time.

*wind sounds*