Synopses & Reviews
An inspired reflection on the bond between wild creatures and the human imagination, told as a chronicle of four seasons with a band of rare desert bighorn sheep.
Among the steep cliffs of Utah's canyonlands a band of rare desert bighorn sheep simply vanished. Although the word extinct was bandied about, their passing seemed to fit the downward spiral of native wildlife in the Southwest that began in the early twentieth century. Remote, isolated, and elusive, this band slipped through the cracks. The bighorns were gone. Then they came back.
We have allowed ourselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own world, Ellen Meloy writes, an estrangement that has left us lonely and spiritually hungry. Now, with generous empathy and wry humor, the award-winning author of The Anthropology of Turquoise describes the mystery of the bighorns' self-rescue. In the role of an amiable, nosy neighbor, Meloy matches her seasonal geography to theirs, observing cycles of breeding and birth, predators and death, the exquisite match of animal to place, of blood and bone to a magnificent redrock canyon.
On backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels to Mexico, the Great Basin, and the Chihuahuan Desert, Meloy roams the rugged habitat of these intriguing and precarious natives. Throughout, we revel with her in the air, light, and dazzling colors of the high desert. Most of all, we come to understand why she finds that watching wild animals intensely is very much like prayer.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Long believed to be disappearing and possibly even extinct, the Southwestern bighorn sheep of Utahs canyonlands have made a surprising comeback. Naturalist Ellen Meloy tracks a band of these majestic creatures through backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels across the Southwest. Alone in the wilderness, Meloy chronicles her communion with the bighorns and laments the growing severance of man from nature, a severance that she feels has left us spiritually hungry. Wry, quirky and perceptive, Eating Stone is a brillant and wholly original tribute to the natural world.
About the Author
A recipient of a Whiting Foundation Award in 1997, Ellen Meloy was a native of the West and lived in California, Montana, and Utah. Her previous book, The Anthropology of Turquoise, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Utah Book Award. Meloy spent most of her life in wild, remote places; at the time of her sudden death in November 2004 she and her husband were living in southern Utah. In her honor, her friends and family founded The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers, which provides support to writers whose work reflects the spirit and passions of her work.