Jefferji Tamisen has lived a sheltered existence. Raised by a Rajput nobleman, he has devoted himself to the sacred dance of Sri Krsna, and is equally skilled at communicating both the Bridegroom and the divine Consort to his audience. But Jefferji's English heritage has finally caught him up, and he is forced to leave his childhood home. Both escape and duty send him into the wild high places of the great Pamir plateau, where not only danger and bloodshed await, but also a refugee Circassian warlord who pulls Jefferji into another, far stranger dance. Its transcendent power will carry Jefferji closer to a fiercer god than he could have dreamed possible--if he manages to survive its passion.
Hutto is living in a tent at twelve thousand feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. The population of these rare alpine sheep is in decline. The lambs are dying in unprecedented numbers. Hutto’s job is to find out why. For months at a time, he follows the bighorn herds, meets mountain lions and bears, weathers injury and storms, and beautifully observes the incredible splendor of the Rocky Mountains. Hutto has a deep connection to Wyoming, having managed a large cattle ranch in his past. He weaves Wyoming’s history of the cowboy, mountain ecology, and the lives of the bighorn sheep into a beautiful flowing narrative. Ultimately, he discovers that the lambs are dying of cystic fibrosis due to selenium deficiency, which is caused by acid rain—a grim ecological disaster caused by human pollution. Here is a new twist on a cautionary tale, and a new voice, eloquently expressing the urgency that we mend our ways.
In this expanded edition of his classic Strangers in High Places, Michael Frome continues to capture the attention and admiration of nature lovers, environmentalists, and professionals as he reviews the last quarter-century in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Frome's superbly written account tells the story of the Great Smoky Mountains and their inhabitants--Eastern Cherokee, back-country settlers, lumbermen, moonshiners, bears and boars. Frome chronicles the power struggles, legislation, and land transactions surrounding the creation of the national park and discusses the continuing threats to the park's natural beauty. Frome's recent conversations with residents, new and old, along with a complement of historic and contemporary photographs, confirm the views stated in the book's original 1966 edition. The author brings his knowledge, experience, and insights to bear on "one of God's special places." He suggests alternatives to commercial overdevelopment and the destruction of the Great Smokies' flora and fauna, citing recent cases such as the Tellico Dam project and the continuing pollution of the Pigeon River. Always emphasizing our inevitable relationship with our surroundings, Frome relates the story of the Great Smoky Mountains with respect and affection for the region, its people, and their history. Michael Frome ranks among the foremost American authors on travel and conservation. His interests are closely associated with national parks, national forests, and natural beauty in the United States and other countries. He has been a columnist and correspondent for major newspapers and magazines and a university lecturer. He is author of Conscience of a Conservationist: Selected Essays.
Much-Afraid had been in the service of the Chief Shepherd, whose great flocks were pastured down in the Valley of Humiliation. She lived with her friends and fellow workers Mercy and Peace in a tranquil little white cottage in the village of Much-Trembling. She loved her work and desired intensely to please the Chief Shepherd, but happy as she was in most ways, she was conscious of several things which hindered her in her work and caused her much secret distress and shame. Here is the allegorical tale of Much-Afraid, an every-woman searching for guidance from God to lead her to a higher place.
From the author of The Old Ways and Underland, an "eloquent (and compulsively readable) reminder that, though we're laying waste the world, nature still holds sway over much of the earth's surface." --Bill McKibben Winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and a finalist for the Orion Book Award Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? That is the question that Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes. He climbs, walks, and swims by day and spends his nights sleeping on cliff-tops and in ancient meadows and wildwoods. With elegance and passion he entwines history, memory, and landscape in a bewitching evocation of wildness and its vital importance.
"All the wild and lonely places, the mountain springs are called now. They were not lonely or wild places in the past days. They were the homes of my people." --Chief Francisco Patencio, the Cahuilla of Palm Springs The Anza-Borrego Desert on California's southern border is a remote and harsh landscape, what author Lawrence Hogue calls "a land of dreams and nightmares, where the waking world meets the fantastic shapes and bent forms of imagination." In a country so sere and rugged, it's easy to imagine that no one has ever set foot there -- a wilderness waiting to be explored. Yet for thousands of years, the land was home to the Cahuilla and Kumeyaay Indians, who, far from being the "noble savages" of European imagination, served as active caretakers of the land that sustained them, changing it in countless ways and adapting it to their own needs as they adapted to it.In All the Wild and Lonely Places, Lawrence Hogue offers a thoughtful and evocative portrait of Anza-Borrego and of the people who have lived there, both original inhabitants and Spanish and American newcomers -- soldiers, Forty-Niners, cowboys, canal-builders, naturalists, recreationists, and restorationists. We follow along with the author on a series of excursions into the desert, each time learning more about the region's history and why it calls into question deeply held beliefs about "untouched" nature. And we join him in considering the implications of those revelations for how we think about the land that surrounds us, and how we use and care for that land."We could persist in seeing the desert as an emptiness, a place hostile to humans, a pristine wilderness," Hogue writes. "But it's better to see this as a place where ancient peoples tried to make their homes, and succeeded. We can learn from what they did here, and use that knowledge to reinvigorate our concept of wildness. Humans are part of nature; it's still nature, even when we change it."
At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild, Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his readers, though, to do the final sort of which is which."--Amazon.
