To live in the vast American Southwest is to understand, writes Gregory McNamee, who lives near Tucson, that "you cannot find a landscape that is not bordered, somewhere, by a blue fringe of mountains." Hence the title of this superb collection of 13 essays that wander the landscape those mountains define. These are meditations on exploration inward and out that revel in nature, honor the environment, touch the land, ponder science and art, contemplate religion, and, with an almost alchemical touch, make big moments small and understandable and small moments big and awesome. The essay "Walking," for instance, is a pointed antidote to the hurly-burly on the surface most of us inhabit:
"Solvitur ambulando," Saint Jerome was fond of saying. To solve a problem, walk around. Walk until your shoe leather falls off, until no moleskin patch can save the tattered remnants of your heels--only walk, walk as only a human can until the mysteries of the ages unravel before you.There is a lot of walking in these pages--up mountain trails, beside rivers, over deserts, along paths. Indeed, walking is a continuous thread. "To live in the desert requires a certain kind of madness," McNamee writes, "that is epidemic out this way. To wander off into that desert, alone or in company, is to test the very limits of one's endurance and to tempt the end of one's tenure on this otherwise green planet." The point? "Such ventures make us human.... We were made to wander afoot.... and we were made to keep moving. When we settle down, it seems, we tend as a species to become nastier rather than more civilized." For McNamee, these walks within the perimeter of the blue mountains keep him at least civilized if not wholly sane. His evocations are meant to lead us down paths toward blue mountains of our own. --Jeff Silverman
From Publishers Weekly
In his new collection of 13 eclectic and enjoyable essays, nature writer McNamee (A Desert Bestiary, etc.) offers up the minutiae of life in the American wild to make a passionate case for its preservation. Whether he is giving instructions on how to avoid being struck by lightning or mourning the state of the Southwest's once vibrant rivers, McNamee is always aware of the fragile and violent relationship between human culture and the wilderness. In open and direct prose, he rages against shortsighted land development, commercial culture and an attitude that places humans at the center of the world. Instead, he posits a responsible, humble relationship between humans and the relatively pristine lands that remain. In "Growing Up Nuclear," he describes a Cold War childhood lived in fear of nuclear holocaust: "the culture of the Bomb deprived me and my agemates for years of a vision of the future." Yet he transcends such experiences to embrace hope and the challenge to keep the world's natural wonders intact, not for our pleasure, but for their own unmistakable value. As he explains, "We need not run with the wolves or dance with the bears to content ourselves with the notion that there are properly worlds that are not ours to comprehend." (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
