On the Mesa [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

John Nichols (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1995

For the first time in paperback with a new foreword by the author, On the Mesa is an autobiographical celebration of life in a fragile and marginal place. On the deserted sagebrush plain just west of his home in Taos, New Mexico, John Nichols finds a healing serenity and an astonishing variety of life and mood that casual observers rarely notice. With On the Mesa, Nichols takes his place with the great nature writers of the West.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To the average eye, the mesa (in northwestern New Mexico) is a wastelanda sagebrush plain with little appeal. To Nichols, author of The Sterile Cuckoo and environmental activist, it is a place of refuge and renewal, a haven of tranquility in a hectic life. Seasonally, the mesa explodes with growth. The bone-dry stock pond of spring fills during summer rains, gradually receding in fall. Spadefoot toads, clam shrimp and other creatures hasten to complete their life cycles while there is water; birds (including a pair of bald eagles) are abundant. The author gives marvelous descriptions of a flash flood, of thunderstorms circling the mesa (only to drop rain on distant peaks), of brilliant starlit nights. On occasion, his solitude is punctured by surveyors, hunters, military aircraft and one kindred spirit. Nichols sides with a handful of sheepmen who want to improve pasturage, but opposes a faction that proposes to develop this fragile land. His book is a beautifully written appreciation of the wilderness. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Nichols is an iconoclastic environmental activist who has lived for 15 years in a high New Mexico valley. His account of life on the mesathe everyday chores, the walks into the desert, the battles to save the valley from energy-hungry power companies and well-intended but destructive government policiesdiscloses the author's struggle to remain optimistic about the valley's future. He loves the solitude of the open spaces and feels intruded upon when he encounters others: an oilman leasing land for development; a woman who appears mysteriously; a shadowy figure who vandalizes his truck. Most are met with outrage; they represent destruction of the valley. The poignancy and thoughtfulness with which Nichols writes make this work suitable for most environmental collections. Randy Dykhuis, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, Mich.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Ancient City Pr; illustrated edition edition (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941270866
• ISBN-13: 978-0941270861
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,102,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoreau of the Southwest, January 25, 2007

By 

Justin Mclaughlin (Minturn, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On the Mesa (Hardcover)

Nichols' primary objective in this short work of non-fiction is to describe (in intricate detail) a year in the life of a stock pond. He begins with its birth from a flash flood, and then chronicles the happenings throughout the year, including all the small species that live off the fleeting resource. The book is bursting with paeans to rodents, snakes, flies, lichens, manifold species of birds, coyotes, beetles, giant salamanders, etc, etc. Any lover of nature writing will revel in Nichols' skill in bringing this world to life; he executes Thoreau's injunction, and skillfully backs life into a corner and learns what it has to teach. Nichols' relationship with his environment is deep, and the work benefits from his long hours spent in quiet observation of it.

The books is also a memoir describing a blossoming relationship with a woman and fellow-nature lover who also frequents the mesa, as well as the author's dealings with a local group of citizens fighting to save the mesa from encroachment. It is in these personal passages that we get the linear narrative, which helps bind together the nature passages.

The book succeeds as description of mesa nature, as poetry of the southwest, as memoir of a writer/naturalist, as a chronicle of the loss of nature to development's unthinking rapacity. The chapters are short, on average 3-5 pages, and interspersed with photographs from the author. After reading On the Mesa, I was inspired to get outside (in the middle of winter) and touch noses with the non-human world.

5.0 out of 5 stars On The Mesa, November 14, 2011

By 

Melissa - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On The Mesa (Paperback)

I just finished On the Mesa and found it one of the most gorgeous books I have ever read. I must also say that I know the area well. My parents and grandparents were all born and raised in New Mexico and I live in Taos whenever I can (I have a home there but find I have to make a living elsewhere). So was homesick when I picked this book up and found myself transported immediately. Nichol's writing is precise and poetic but also visceral. I could smell the scents, I could feel the temperature, see the stars, feel the breeze...I didn't have to miss the place, because in the reading of this book I was there.

So grateful. AND I learned so much about the natural world not only the experience but the names of things I have been familiar with forever but haven't really known.

4.0 out of 5 stars Fighting the good fight in a losing battle, June 11, 2004

By 

Jack Purcell (Placitas, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On The Mesa (Paperback)

Readers familiar with Nichol's other works might be surprised by On The Mesa. The book differs from anything he's published in the past and more nearly resembles the reflections of writers better known for non-fiction works than for fiction.

On The Mesa is the story of one of the skirmishes in the long war over the encroachments of 'post-modern' civilization into Northern New Mexico. Those battles are usually portrayed best in fiction works because they constitute an epic. Bradford's books, Red Sky at Morning and So Far From Heaven are two of the first of this genre, followed by the several Milagro Beanfield novels by Nichols.

On The Mesa lacks the penetrating humor readers find attractive in the fiction books by Nichols, but they'll probably be pleased by the reverence, the maturity of tone and the underlying sweet melancholy recognition of an inevitable loss in a noble fight to preserve a facet of the past.