Henry Thoreau and John Muir Among the Indians

History

Fleck, Richard F.

Americas

Archon Books

Our National Parks is a guidebook supreme, an exciting introduction to Yosemite and several other magnificent parks by the man who, more than any other person, helped to create them. After this fast-paced trip with Muir, past visitors to the parks will want to revisit them with new insights, and those who have never wandered these trails will not rest until they have done so. The book, long out of print, was originally published in 1901, its ten essays having previously appeared as articles in the Atlantic Monthly. Muir wrote them with a single purpose—to entice people, by his descriptions, to come to the parks, to see and enjoy them. If enough people did so, reasoned Muir, they would surely love the wilderness as he did, and the parks would be preserved. Muir carried out his public relations mission with remarkable success. Every page of this book carries his unbridled and irresistible enthusiasm. Our National Parks is part reminiscence, part philosophy, and mostly enticing description. It is all vintage Muir. Although the book treats Yellowstone, Sequoia, General Grant, and other national parks of the Western U.S., Muir devotes the bulk of the work to his first love—Yosemite, settled into the heart of the Sierra Nevada. Indeed, six of the book’s chapters are devoted to Yosemite, treating the forests, wild gardens, fountains and streams, animals, and birds of the park. The concluding essay is an impassioned plea to save American forests. All visitors to the great western national parks—and all who will one day visit them—will be captivated by Muir’s descriptions. The grandeur of this wilderness is reflected in the very spirit of John Muir. Both shine through every page of this remarkable book.

Our National Parks

Science & Math

MUIR, JOHN

Earth Sciences

University of Wisconsin Press

Desert Rims to Mountains High (Pruett)

Inspired by his ranger days in Rocky Mountain National Park more than forty-five years ago as well as more recent rambles, Richard Fleck has created these descriptive essays that take readers from shimmering desert heat to snowy summits. Fleck has expanded his acclaimed book Breaking Through the Clouds (2004) to create a new book that concentrates on the intermountain American West. This edition includes counterpoint experiences in the desert, canyon lands, and dry prairie far below the summits of the lofty peaks, such as Death Valley, Grand Gulch, Grand Canyon, and the Great Sand Dunes. His literary model was Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and his intent is to involve readers with an equally potent but different kind of natural reality. Fleck says, “After all, do not mountains rise out of deserts and dry lands? Mountains and surrounding deserts should not be separated.” The mountains are a constant source of spiritual renewal for this author, enabling him to become more aware and whole.

Desert Rims to Mountains High (The Pruett Series)

WestWinds Press

<div>Inspired by his ranger days in Rocky Mountain National Park more than forty-five years ago as well as more recent rambles, Richard Fleck has created these descriptive essays that take readers from shimmering desert heat to snowy summits. Fleck has expanded his acclaimed book Breaking Through the Clouds (2004) to create a new book that concentrates on the intermountain American West. This edition includes counterpoint experiences in the desert, canyon lands, and dry prairie far below the summits of the lofty peaks, such as Death Valley, Grand Gulch, Grand Canyon, and the Great Sand Dunes. His literary model was Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and his intent is to involve readers with an equally potent but different kind of natural reality. Fleck says, "After all, do not mountains rise out of deserts and dry lands? Mountains and surrounding deserts should not be separated." The mountains are a constant source of spiritual renewal for this author, enabling him to become more aware and whole.</div>

Nature & Ecology

"This canyon world where water yearns toward the ocean is a place so large I can’t take it in. Instead, I am taken in, traveling a near dream as we journey by water, contained by rock walls. In order to see this shorn-away world, I narrow my vision to the small and nearly secret. Never mind the stone’s illusion of permanence or the great strength of water. I look to the most fragile of things here, to the plant world of the canyon. The other river travelers seem taken in by stone, time, and water, and do not see the small things that tempt my attention, the minute fern between stones, the tiny black snails in a pond of water. I am drawn in by the growing life and not by the passing." - from 'Plant Journey' by Linda Hogan The mystique of the Colorado River is no less enduring and powerful than is its physical presence in the landscape of the West. Little wonder that narratives about the Colorado still arouse and intrigue readers, or that the river continues to inspire new writing among contemporary authors. What is surprising is that no anthology offering a comprehensive introduction to these works existed - until now. A Colorado River Reader spans hundreds of years and many cultures and voices to capture an array of responses to this mighty river and tributaries. The collection opens with a Paiute creation myth set in the Grand Canyon and progresses through time, encompassing the Spanish and American exploration narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and culminating in the adventure and nature writings of the twentieth. This is a book that deserves a place next to every armchair and in a pocket of every backpack.

Colorado River Reader

University of Utah Press

Essays recount revelations and transcendental joy found in mountain adventures from California to Alaska

Mountaineering Essays (Peregrine Smith Literary Naturalists)

Gibbs-Smith

Critical perspectives on Native American fiction

Three Continents Press

Two orphaned Shoshone boys are taught the ways of their people by their grandfather.

Pachee Goyo: History and Legends from the Shoshone

Weeks, Rupert

Weeks, Violet

Bean, Greg

Flach, Victor

Jelm Mountain Pubns

Spirit Mound is a novel that focuses on the building of Newgrange burial mound 5,000 years ago in periglacial Ireland when ancient tribes gathered in the Boyne River Valley to form a communal alliance consisting of the wheat tribe, the heron tribe and the wolf tribe, who were farmers, fishers and hunters. Oonah, chief of the wolf tribe, receives visions to build a spirit connector in which ashes of the deceased were to be placed in an inner chamber. There, during each winter solstice, the sun's rays would energize the spirits to come forth and communicate with the living up to our own time. Three generations of tribesmen completed the construction of Newgrange, or Bru Na Boinne. Oonah, his son and grandson all communicate with much later humans, including a Roman centurion and later an American Indian visitor, each on a quest for spiritual unity.

Spirit Mound: A Novel of Ancient Ireland

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Publishamerica Inc

Don’t Fence Me In is a new collection of poems that focuses on the ethereal and spiritual essence of the American West. Some of the basic themes found in the collection include the psychic pull of the land and its impact on the mind and spirit of the beholder, the sacred relationship of tribal peoples to place, and the serendipitous qualities of the West in the sound of coyotes yip-yapping at midnight, or in a sudden encounter with rattlesnakes, or in the fluctuating beauty of snow banners blowing off the lea side of the Rocky Mountains.

Don't Fence Me in: Poems of the American West

Poetry

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