Customer Reviews

Grand Canyon: Little Things in a Big Place (Desert Places)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's almost as if there are two Grand Canyons. There's the one on the calendars and post cards, the big view from the rim. Then there's the inner canyon, the one experienced only by river runners and hikers. And sometimes--rarely--by readers. Rarely because it's hard to do justice to the canyon. The canyon is all about Time, and it takes a lot of time to even start to get to know it well.

The University of Arizona's Desert Places series teams up leading authors and photographers to offer personal explorations of famous landscapes. Yes, in its desert climate too the inner canyon is quite different from the cool, pine forest rim. The team for the Grand Canyon is Ann Zwinger and Michael Collier, both of whom have spent a great deal of time getting to know the canyon. And it shows.

In the course of the river trip in this narrative, Ann Zwinger offers us her usual graceful exploration of wonders large and small. She is a careful naturalist who notices the smallest patterns, yet she is also ready to find the largest poetry: "I work my fingers into the interstices of this cool rough rock that contains all earth's hopes and dreams. I think that if there is any place I can ever come close to glimpsing the age of this earth, the forces that formed it, the heat that melded it, the seas that overlay it, the time out of mind of sand grains formed, raindrops fallen, breezes wafted, sunshine shafting, all that went on and on in dogged perseverence, millennium after millennium--it is right here, right now."

Grand Canyon photographers seem prone to the same syndrone as canyon painters. You can usually tell which ones have spent too little time here: they've learned the rules of landscape painting in art school, and now they try to force those rules onto the canyon. But the canyon has its own unique rules, rules made of light and shadow and subtlty. Most artists and photographers aim for grandeur, not even grasping the concept that the inner canyon is an intensely intimate place. Fortunately Zwinger's intimate prose is matched by Collier's intimate photos. A rim tourist wouldn't even recognize many of them as being the Grand Canyon: there are slot canyons, flowers, rock formations. But best of all, half of the photos feature people, usually small figures against a sinuous landscape, often only shadows, shadows pondering, shadows that are not anyone in particular but universal human shapes. Shadows that evoke some of the mystery of canyon and time, life and earth.

A work of impressively accessible scholarship, Grand Canyon: Little Things In A Big Place, knowledgeably authored by Ann Zwinger (Adjunct Professor, Colorado College) and illustrated with black and white photography from Michael Collier offers an intimate and descriptive survey at the awe-inspiring spectacle of the Grand Canyon including the rare beauty and striking imagery of one of the world's greatest natural wonders as well as a comprehensive and brief exploration into its more precise recreational and geological complexities. Grand Canyon: Little Things In A Big Place is very strongly recommended for all readers searching for an overall introduction to the Grand Canyon, as well as those aspiring to vacation in exploration of the great wonder for its remarkable detailing and timeless perspective of the panoramic sight.