Review
“Gorgeously original prose . . . a sensibility drawn to the mystical yet grounded in science.” —Newsday
“A volume of ten deep, wandering essays that at times are so point-blank vital you nearly need to put down the book to settle yourself.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Her essays, delicately combining interior and exterior exploration, are as spare and beautiful as the landscape from which they’ve grown. . . . Each one is a pilgrimage into the secrets of the heart.” —Andrea Barrett, National Book Award–winning author of Ship Fever
“Ehrlich eschews logic and finds order in paradox. . . . Accounts of a heifer in trouble, training a horse, a wounded eagle, and always, the land and the weather in an infinity of permutations—subjects Ehrlich’s eloquence and passion elevate to poetry.” —Chicago Tribune
“Her observation is never less than diamond-sharp. . . . Her scrutiny is as exact as any naturalist’s; transcendence occurs without veils and mists, and there is often a delicate sense of social comedy.” —The Boston Globe
“A powerful, idiosyncratic collection of naturalistic essays . . . Ehrlich’s prose . . . yields provocative images. . . . Her sharp eye cast unblinking both within and without.” —Publishers Weekly
“Ehrlich combines a naturalist’s eye with a philosopher’s meditations. . . . A lyrical, loving appreciation of landscape and life.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A practical listener . . . [Ehrlich] repeatedly finds common sense in the wisdom of physicists and astronomers. . . . She has a talent for using a prosaic task, a farm chore for instance, as a way of reaching toward something more.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“In one sentence Ehrlich can evoke the brushstrokes of an ancient but timeless canvas.” —TheVirginian-Pilot
“Her Islands offer a blessed cool-down to the hassled city dweller, a green space to be quiet in.” —New Woman
“She writes with the same lyrical ease (as The Solace of Open Spaces), a seamless style that engages readers with that rare combination of intelligence, perception and grace.” —Telegram & Gazette (Worcester)
“Her thoughtful, poetic language is a pleasure to read.” —Library Journal
About the Author
Gretel Ehrlich is an award-winning writer and naturalist. Born and raised in California, she was educated at Bennington College and UCLA Film School. She is the author of thirteen books, including the essay collection The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), the novel Heart Mountain (1988), and the memoirs A Match to the Heart: One Woman’s Story of Being Struck by Lightning (1994) and This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland (2001), as well as The Future of Ice: A Journey into Cold (2004), and, most recently, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of a Tsunami (2014). Her prose pieces have appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, and National Geographic, among many other publications. Ehrlich lives in Montana and Hawaii.
From Publishers Weekly
Loss and recovery, isolation and connectedness are themes running through this powerful, idiosyncratic collection of naturalistic essays. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the paperback edition. From Library Journal
Ehrlich's well-received work, The Solace of Open Spaces ( LJ 11/1/85), is a collection of descriptive essays about Wyoming sheepherders, cowboys, Native Americans, and desolate spaces. Her new work begins and ends in Wyoming, but goes beyond, to the Channel Islands off the California coast and to mountain Shinto temples in Japan, where the author made a pilgrimage. Her essays, however, are not tied to place, and thus these leaps enlarge, rather than jar, her writing; she uses place as a point of departure for her images and explorations of architecture, anthropology, a golden eagle, the Yellowstone fire, physics, time, astronomy, and much more. Ehrlich has also published poetry and short stories, including the recent Drinking Dry Clouds: Stories from Wyoming ( LJ 6/15/91). Her thoughtful, poetic language is a pleasure to read. Recommended for general literature collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91.
-Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Kirkus Reviews
The power and mystery of untamed nature in the Wyoming wilderness is the focus of an evocative but sometimes abstruse new collection of essays by Ehrlich (Heart Mountain, 1988; The Solace of Open Spaces, 1985). A transplanted Californian, Ehrlich chronicles life on her Wyoming ranch--training horses, doctoring calves, and irrigating fields--as she seeks emotional lessons in the daily unfolding of nature's wisdom. Exploring such themes as home and isolation, birth and death, and order and chaos, she returns repeatedly to the concept of paradox. Spring brings not only rebirth but death as a sudden thaw floods fields, killing new calves. Summer means fecundity but also destructive fires, which are themselves paradoxical--the black ash left in their wake is the richest of fertilizers; the fires are not the end of a life cycle but perhaps the beginning. ``How fragile death is, how easily it opens back into life,'' writes the author. At her best, in observations like these, Ehrlich combines a naturalist's eye with a philosopher's meditations--an ability that soars in a description of her trip to visit sacred sites in Japan. Occasionally, however, she abandons the rigors of structure and analysis for murkier musings--for example, in a desultory tour of her sprawling acres: ``I search for the possible in the impossible. Nothing. Then I try for the opposite, but the yellow leaves in trees--shaped like mouths--just laugh.'' Still, a lyrical, loving appreciation of landscape and life. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. 
![Islands, the Universe, Home: Essays by [Gretel Ehrlich]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51UyeerXFdL._SY346_.jpg)
