This series of essays about rural life, based on the author's experiences on a small farm in Wyoming, focuses on the people and landscape of the West and explore themes common to all areas.
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"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still." Whether she's reflecting on nature's teachings, divulging her experiences as a cowpuncher, or painting vivid word portraits of the people she lives and works with, Gretel Ehrlich's observations are lyrical and funny, wise and authentic. After moving from the city to a vast new state, she writes of adjusting to cowboy life, boundless open spaces, and the almost incomprehensible harshness of a Wyoming winter:
"When it's fifty below, the mercury bottoms out and jiggles there as if laughing at those of us still above ground. Once I caught myself on tiptoes, peering down into the thermometer as if there were an extension inside inscribed with higher and higher declarations of physical misery: ninety below to the power of ten and so on."
After experiencing the isolated life of a sheep herder, she writes, "Keenly observed the world is transformed. The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient."
Ehrlich's gift is one of subtle precision. She writes beauty into the plainest of thoughts and meaning into the simplest of ideas: "True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere." --Kathryn True
From Publishers Weekly
Like many before her, poet Gretel Ehrlich discovered the therapeutic qualities of the West. In 1976, a time of personal crisis, she moved from the East to a small farm in Wyoming where she ultimately found peace of mind and inspiration. Originally, she had gone west to make a film for PBS; she returned to work with neighbors at cattle- and sheep-ranching, taking pleasure in open spaces. Ehrlich writes with sensitivity and affection about people, the seasons and the landscape. Whether she is enjoying solitude or companionship, her writing evokes the romance and timelessness of the West. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Gretel Erlich was a poet and filmmaker when she first came to Wyoming in 1976. She was so taken with everything about the place that she became a cowherd, which gave her time to write about the American West. Reading her books, however, is very much like seeing a film, for her filmmaker's eye and awareness of nuance and gesture is evident in the way she chooses her words.
In The Solace of Open Spaces, Erlich presents us with an eclectic bunch of frontier characters that she met while working as a ranch hand. Almost unaware of what's been accomplished, we readers find ourselves shedding former stereotypes of these people in exchange for seeing them for what they are: unique, quirky, interesting, inexplicable men and women. The Weather (and the word deserves that capital letter, as you'll see upon reading the book) plays as large a role as the people in Ehrlich's book.
About the title: When she arrived in Wyoming, Erlich was grieving the death of someone important to her. As she works hard at physical labor, meets new people, falls in love with the land, and sheds her past like sweat running down her back, healing from grief occurs - although she doesn't exactly say this.
Altogether, a beautiful book and a wonderful read.
In The Solace of Open Spaces, Erlich presents us with an eclectic bunch of frontier characters that she met while working as a ranch hand. Almost unaware of what's been accomplished, we readers find ourselves shedding former stereotypes of these people in exchange for seeing them for what they are: unique, quirky, interesting, inexplicable men and women. The Weather (and the word deserves that capital letter, as you'll see upon reading the book) plays as large a role as the people in Ehrlich's book.
About the title: When she arrived in Wyoming, Erlich was grieving the death of someone important to her. As she works hard at physical labor, meets new people, falls in love with the land, and sheds her past like sweat running down her back, healing from grief occurs - although she doesn't exactly say this.
Altogether, a beautiful book and a wonderful read.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In these essays about Wyoming, the imagery of mountain and plain and weather calls to mind the sweeping landscapes of John Ford movies. Ehrlich, born and raised in California, retains her outsider's eye for detail, and is able to translate the perspective of someone trained in documentary filmmaking very effectively into the medium of words.
Her portrayal of the men who work in this environment is very different from the stereotypes we know from Marlboro ads, "Bonanza," and movie westerns. She finds cowboys often tender-hearted, quirky, and curiously courtly. Not to be outdone by the men in this world of extremes and hard work, the women she meets and befriends are tough-minded and independent. Completing her picture are the Native Americans, whom she portrays respectfully and with an ironic appreciation for incongruity, as they both recover and reinvent a lost heritage.
Her portrayal of the men who work in this environment is very different from the stereotypes we know from Marlboro ads, "Bonanza," and movie westerns. She finds cowboys often tender-hearted, quirky, and curiously courtly. Not to be outdone by the men in this world of extremes and hard work, the women she meets and befriends are tough-minded and independent. Completing her picture are the Native Americans, whom she portrays respectfully and with an ironic appreciation for incongruity, as they both recover and reinvent a lost heritage.
Hers is also a personal story. Beginning with the wrenching death of a close male friend, it recounts in her growing love for Wyoming and its people the discovery of a new life. And while her book is no heart-on-the-sleeve display of pain and recovery, one senses at almost every step the healing process that underlies the words. As slender as a book of poems, this volume of essays calls out to be read slowly and savored, word for word.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
My first images of Wyoming were formed as a boy, watching "The Virginian" on TV. It was a landscape of gently rolling hills and a mild climate where you could go around in shirtsleeves pretty much all the time. Well, of course, Wyoming bears no resemblance to a Southern California back lot, as I learned when I finally went there as an adult. The climate is not benign, and the land has a scale that can make you and your problems seem very small indeed.
Gretel Ehrlich writes about the true Wyoming of vast, lonely spaces, and brutal, bone chilling winters. In her book, it is a place to lose oneself and then find redemption in the rhythm of life lived in a hard place. She writes about the people that live in this place and their relationships.She writes of lonliness and endurance, friendship and new beginnings.
The highlight of the book, for me, is "The Rules of the Game", an appreciative essay on Rodeo. I've not read anything like it. Ms Ehrlich's description finds the beauty in this celebration of both individual skill and achievement, and the power and grace of teamwork. It's a lovely piece in a wonderful book.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful book
I read Heart Mountain many years ago. It is the kind of book that stays with you.
Gretel Ehrlich's love of Wyoming and her ability to put that love into words is what... Read more
Gretel Ehrlich's love of Wyoming and her ability to put that love into words is what... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Dorothy Finkel
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful surprise!
The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), by Gretel Ehrlich
I recently discovered Gretel Ehrlich, not that she isn't well known by others. Read more
I recently discovered Gretel Ehrlich, not that she isn't well known by others. Read more
Published 14 months ago by James R Ament
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where was the editor?
Highly praising blurbs on the back from big guns: Tracy Kidder, Annie Dillard, Ivan Doig, and Edward Abbey. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Julia M. Hoskins
5.0 out of 5 stars
"True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere."
Gretel Ehrlich has resounding prose and acclaim for Wyoming. The Solace of Open Spaces reads like a collection of essays, with a storyline woven through it, both seasonal as... Read more
Published on January 31, 2011 by Matt Beatty
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disjointed, disappointing
Living in Wyoming, I am attracted to books about Wyoming. This book was a great disappointment - it is too disjointed and is full of exaggerations.
Published on January 4, 2011 by Linda Davis
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love of Wyoming
In 1976, after "suffering a tragedy", Ehrlich (born 1946 in California) went to Wyoming to make a documentary film. Read more
Published on October 23, 2010 by Ilya
4.0 out of 5 stars
Space to Breathe and Think
Gretel Ehrlich wrote about what it was like for her to live in Wyoming after spending years of her life in a large city. Read more
Published on August 23, 2010 by Judaye
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable and Accurate Read
This book is stocked in the "Buffalo Bill Historical Center" in Cody, Wyoming. This was a good endorsement -- the museum is outstanding, and they certainly are an authority on... Read more
Published on August 2, 2010 by Krykie
4.0 out of 5 stars
Open spaces have always attracted me.
Wide landscapes and open land as far as the eye can see have always been a draw for me. The middle of a very large city can be so confining if you don't have the time/money to get... Read more
Published on December 3, 2009 by Patti Hogan
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading
I did not get my impressions of what a cowboy was from Hollywood. Instead I grew up in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and talked to the people in this book every day on the streets... Read more
Published on April 8, 2009 by Mikebear
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 4
books:
100
books
cite this book:
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- Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad on page 83
- A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck by Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich in Front Matter
- A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich in Front Matter
- Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad on page 83
- Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography (Under the Sign of Nature) by Mark Allister on 14 pages
- Reopening the Western Frontier by Ed Marston on 5 pages
- The Place Within: Portraits Of The American Landscape By 20 Contemporary Writers by Jodi Daynard on 4 pages
- Turning To Earth: Stories of Ecological Conversion by F. Marina Schauffler on page 65, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Why We Stay Together: 20 Writers on Marriage and Its Rewards by Jennifer Schwamm and Jennifer Schwamm Willis Willis on page 63, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 100 books citing this book
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