A seasonal fire lookout's notes on the books and board games that get him through a Montana fire season — written alone in a tower, mailed down when the trail crew makes a supply run.https://wesleyshideout.com/en-UShttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/dwellings-of-eldervale/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/dwellings-of-eldervale/A worker placement and monster brawling hybrid that somehow packs its own storage system and a genuinely mean solo opponent into one big box.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep/A bounty hunter novel that spends most of its pages on what people do to fill a flattened world, animals mostly, and machines pretending to be them.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-giver/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-giver/A world with the weather smoothed out of it, read during four days of cloud sitting flat on the ridge. Short book, mark it leaves is not.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/kemet-blood-and-sand/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/kemet-blood-and-sand/An area-control war game with real teeth, tested two-player against a hiker who wandered up the trail with nothing better to do that afternoon.Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/three-days-of-weather/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/three-days-of-weather/A stretch in late July when the sky did three different things in three days, and I had nowhere to be but the catwalk watching it.Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/scythe/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/scythe/A mech war game where nobody really wants to fight, tested one player at a time against a deck of cardboard opponents in a tower with no cell signal.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/terraforming-mars/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/terraforming-mars/A genuinely great solo engine builder that fights the fourteen-by-fourteen room it's in, cubes sliding everywhere the whole time.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/hank-and-the-elk/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/hank-and-the-elk/A running joke that started with a bull elk on the wrong channel, and what it turned into three seasons later.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-hiker-who-stayed-for-two-hours/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-hiker-who-stayed-for-two-hours/Most people who make the climb up to the tower stay ten minutes, ask about the view, and head back down. Teresa didn't do that.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/unmatched-battle-of-legends-volume-one/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/unmatched-battle-of-legends-volume-one/A duel game that fits on the fold-down table in a fire tower, King Arthur included, even when he can't quite win.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-western-i-almost-left-at-the-trailhead/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-western-i-almost-left-at-the-trailhead/Hank sent up a paperback western with the July resupply. I almost didn't crack it, and then I didn't put it down.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/out-of-control/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/out-of-control/A long, scattered field guide to systems nobody's steering, beehives and economies alike. Read slow over three weeks between smoke checks.Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-other-notebook/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/the-other-notebook/I keep two notebooks up here. One is for games and books. The other one is for smoke, wind, and whatever the sky is doing, and it's the one that actually matters.Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/a-wizard-of-earthsea/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/a-wizard-of-earthsea/A spare, quiet coming-of-age story that reads like it was written for someone alone with nothing but weather and time to notice things in.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/A hand-management car racing game that turns out to be one of the better solo games I've had up here, five AI Legends and me and a bag of overheating engine cards.Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-gods-themselves/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-gods-themselves/Asimov's three part novel about a tungsten bottle, a parallel universe, and the aliens in the middle section who turned out to be the whole reason to read it.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-missoula-looks-like-in-january/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-missoula-looks-like-in-january/Five months alone on a ridge, then a room in town with a landlord and a bus schedule. The gap between those two lives is bigger than the drive.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-book-of-the-new-sun/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-book-of-the-new-sun/Dense, deliberately obscure, and about as good a match for a season with no cell signal and nowhere to be as any book I own.Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas/A short story, maybe fifteen minutes of reading, that outworks most philosophy I've sat through on the same question.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/star-realms/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/star-realms/Two decks of cards, no board, no tracker worth trusting, and somehow enough game in it to survive a whole fire season.Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/against-solo-mode-as-a-solution/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/against-solo-mode-as-a-solution/The board game hobby treats solo modes as a workaround for not having anyone else to play with. Five months alone in a tower a season have made me distrust that framing more, not less.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/manufacturing-consent/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/manufacturing-consent/Heaviest book in my pack this season, propaganda model and all. Correct in a way that's hard to argue with and uncomfortable to sit alone with in a tower.Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/lost-ruins-of-arnak/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/lost-ruins-of-arnak/A deckbuilder and worker placement hybrid that's basically built for the tower, quiet, mostly solo, over before you've had enough of it.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-rediscovery-of-man/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/the-rediscovery-of-man/Cordwainer Smith's collected Instrumentality stories, myths of a future sixty thousand years out, read a couple at a time across a slow August with the radio quiet.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-actually-gets-said-on-the-radio/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-actually-gets-said-on-the-radio/Twice a day, same two voices, and almost none of it is what you'd expect from the only conversation in someone's day.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/arcs/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/arcs/Cole Wehrle's trick-taking space opera has no solo mode at all, so up here it's a strictly two-player game, and it mostly earns that.Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/his-masters-voice/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/his-masters-voice/A dense, plotless memoir about a government project that fails to decode a signal from the stars, and somehow that failure is the whole point.Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/ark-nova/https://wesleyshideout.com/reviews/ark-nova/A heavy card-and-board engine game about zoos and conservation, played solo through a companion app on a tower cabin table roughly the size of the game's own board.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-earns-its-weight-in-the-pack/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/what-earns-its-weight-in-the-pack/Three seasons on trail crew taught me to weigh everything before it goes in the pack. I never stopped doing that math, I just started doing it about books and games instead of tent stakes.Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Harthttps://wesleyshideout.com/essays/why-the-phone-stays-in-the-truck/https://wesleyshideout.com/essays/why-the-phone-stays-in-the-truck/There's no signal up there anyway, but some sunny weeks I could charge one and carry it for the camera, the clock, the notes app. I still leave it at the trailhead.Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalWesley Hart