A most excellent series of essays about the deserts of the West by anthroplogist/archaeologist/adventurer Craig Childs. He hikes his way into Burning Man across the hard pan, climbs among improbably balanced rocks thousands of years in the making, camps atop a New Mexico mesa in the middle of a thunderstorm, and - best of the bunch - flies in a small plane through evaporating rain ("virga") over the deserts of the Four Corners. Stick this in your back pocket on your next hike out into the wilderness. -seth
It's impossible to imagine another writer in America who is better than Craig Childs at elegizing the fearsome and confounding appeal of our most austere landscapes. --KEVIN FEDARKO, author of The Emerald MileFrom the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons--a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human. CRAIG CHILDS is the author of more than a dozen books on nature, adventure, and science, including The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Outside. Recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, he lives in Colorado.
About the Author
CRAIG CHILDS is the author of more than a dozen books on nature, adventure, and science, including The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Outside. Recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, he lives in Colorado.
