Customer Reviews

Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River

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

 

 

This book is a gem. If Abbey had a feminine counter-voice Meloy's would be it. Like Desert Solitaire Meloy speaks of the raw, untamed beauty of the southern Utah wilderness. We travel with her and her husband Mark down the Green River through Desolation Canyon and deep into the wild places of the human psyche. Meloy takes us back to our more primitive self with an eye for detail and a soft, gentle humor. She transports us on a journey that few of us will ever take. Through her eyes we see the river from a myriad of uses and view points: the prehistoric Fremont culture, early river runners to the modern river rat. Like Abbey before her, Meloy gives us a sense of place that comes alive through her words. This is an ode to a wild river and as she feared, possibly a eulogy. Desolation Canyon its environs remains one of the more endangered places in the southwest. The wild in all of us lost a voice with her untimely death in 2004.

A meditation on the Green River, water in the West, and wilderness.

I first read Meloy's EATING STONE, a book about desert bighorns. In comparison to that book, where the specificity of the theme reined in the author's imagination somewhat, RAVEN'S EXILE ranges widely. I think it should be read as a meditation/rant rather than as a factual account or even a memoir. At times the language is poetic; at other times I found it imprecise and over-the-top. Sometimes Meloy's outrage at American culture's lack of concern for wilderness, the hubris of building huge cities in the middle of the desert, and the arrogance of wanting to replace native fish with others that give better "sport" is acutely expressed and trenchant; sometimes the text degenerates into idiosyncracy and misanthropy.

Recommended, but I tend to think Craig Childs' book on water in the desert addresses the topic better.

I have a 1995 copy of "Raven's Exile" and I picked it up again a week ago because I am planning a trip through Labyrinth Canyon and I was looking for insights on the Green River. Colin Fletcher wrote "The River" which I re-read first and then I opened Ellen's work and was immediately entranced and transported again to the Utah desert.

While I like Abbey's work, Meloy is less of a curmudgeon. I am an admirer of Fletcher but Meloy is less Narcissistic. She reports her emotions and has a turn of phrase which is astonishing. After a chapter on the absence of Ravens in Desolation... a chapter later she throws in a bombshell about the disappeared native Fremonts... "I believe a small band of Fremont Indians remain in Desolation Canyon. They spend a great deal of time with ravens." After reading that line I believe too.

my family has been reading and then re reading this book for at least 10 years.. for us its like poetry and takes us all back to some faboulous river trip memories..