Burntwater [Paperback]

Scott Thybony (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

In Navajo country, where the land is thick with legends and forgotten histories, a writer sets out to find a place that no longer exists except on a few old maps: Burntwater. The story opens when two friends get stuck in a remote pocket of the desert as a winter storm moves in. They are taking a wandering route across the Four Corners region, curving through Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona on a long arc into the mythic heart of the country. As they travel, the author calls up past experiences in this land where the past flows seamlessly into the present. He remembers a medicine man whose chanting could start the cold engine of a Volkswagen. He describes an act of sabotage against an oil company by two Vietnam vets armed with deer rifles. He recalls how a winter of herding sheep for a Navajo family and a search for a Hopi known as the Sun Chief led him further into a human landscape as strange and compelling as the terrain. This book takes the backroads, crossing the Colorado Plateau from the headwaters of the Virgin River to the mouth of the Dirty Devil, from the badlands below Twin Angels to a remote mesa in Bandelier. As the miles go by and the stories unfold, there is a growing sense of mystery, of words not spoken, of messages carried on the wind. Reaching the Shrine of the Stone Lions, the writer recounts a near-fatal descent into the Grand Canyon where he finds a way to reconnect with the beauty of life. There his journey ends with an emotional punch that goes straight to the mind and the heart.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Burntwater of Scott Thybony's title is a place you will not find on any map: a tiny point on the vast Colorado Plateau, its name commemorates a Navajo shepherd's once having melted ice by building a circle of fire. Traveling through this magical land, Thybony takes us along on a quest to understand the traditional Navajo blessing Hozho naninaadoo, "Go in beauty." This is, he writes, "not the beauty of surfaces alone, but an indwelling beauty that enfolds and completes, a life-restoring beauty." Full of anthropology, geology, and history, Thybony's book wanders into haunted side-canyons and over tall mountains. His love of this austere land is evident at every turn, and his essays deepen our understanding of the beauty that lies all around us.

From Kirkus Reviews

A thoughtful journey into little-known spots along the Colorado Plateau. Thybony, a northern Arizonabased writer locally known for a comprehensive guide to hiking the Grand Canyon, has an affinity for places not found on any map. The Burntwater of his title is one, a place whose Navajo name commemorates a shepherd's having melted ice there by building a circle of fire around it; elsewhere he takes us to other poetically named places like Crazy Jug Point, Tsegi, and Oraibi. Thybony is on a quest to understand the traditional Navajo blessing H¢zh¢ naninaadoo (``Go in beauty''), a formula that younger Navajo consider old-fashioned but that stayed with Thybony from the moment he first heard it. ``Only later did I learn about the Navajo idea of beauty and how it moves through life like a wind,'' he writes. ``It's not the beauty of surfaces alone, but an indwelling beauty that enfolds and completes, a life-restoring beauty.'' Informed by a deep knowledge of anthropology, geology, and history, Thybony's quest takes us inside the rock home of the Hopi elder Don Talayesva, author of the classic autobiography Sun Chief, ``a man running from angels''; into haunted side-canyons along the Colorado River, where Thybony affectingly recalls his brother's death in an airplane crash over Grand Canyon; and into the backcountry of western New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and of a world ``where the dead could no longer be counted, where numbers gave way to sheer mass, where death became nameless.'' The author's love of the land is evident at every turn, and his essays deepen our understanding of both these mysterious places and of people who seek beauty within and without them. Gracefully written, this is outstanding reading for armchair travelers and habitu‚s of the Four Corners country alike. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 117 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press; First edition. edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816514801
• ISBN-13: 978-0816514809
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #422,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Four Corners Fascination, August 3, 2001

By 

Bruce Cline "Just a Reader" (Littleton, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burntwater (Paperback)

Author Scott Thybony shares with readers his fascination with and love of the Four Corners region of the Southwest. Burntwater is a loosely joined series of descriptions of Thybony's travels to various locations within this sparsely populated region: the Grand Canyon, back country on the Navajo Reservation, the Goosenecks region of the San Juan River, northern New Mexico, and others. Scott's wandering narrative describes his experiences in each place, often involving travel companions or new found acquaintances and sometimes just himself. One moving chapter describes how he nearly died from dehydration in the Grand Canyon while hiking to the site of his brother's death in an airplane/helicopter collision.

This is a wonderful book filled with gentle descriptions of sometimes physically harsh locations and circumstances. Scott describes but does not judge and, unlike so many other authors, refrains from directing readers to specific emotions or thoughts. Those he leaves up to you. You can easily read this book's 117 pages in a single sitting, but the invitation to this marvelous part of the Southwest may result in a literary and even physical journey of discovery that can last a lifetime.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good a book about the West as "Desert Solitaire", September 21, 2005

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Burntwater (Paperback)

I stumbled across this book accidentally while researching a book about Glen Canyon and Lake Powell. I started reading it in the library parking lot, and finished it the next night in bed, around two a.m.
I WOULD have finished the book the very same night I got it, except that Scott Thybony did such a terrific job of invoking the feeling of the outdoor West that I had to fill a backpack and take my wife on an unplanned desert camping trip.
"Burntwater" visits an amazing variety of my very favorite places in the West, and is full of interesting history, great stories, unique facts, and insightful observations. And the writing: the writing is superb. (Bats "flicker"!) I found this book to be every bit as good as Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire"--much more Zen-like, and much less preachy; a good description of the West is reason enough to protect the West--it doesn't always need an insane prophet to yell about it.
This book distills and bottles the spirit of the Four Corners states; read it in the West and you'll find yourself running outside to be a part of it; read it somewhere else, and you'll find yourself going crazy to get here.