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Born a Chief
The Nineteenth Century Hopi Boyhood of Edmund Nequatewa, as told to Alfred F. Whiting
Named in Stone and Sky
Arizona is a land whose natural beauty many have sought to capture in words.
Gregory McNamee has combed a body of literature that spans centuries to create this anthology of writings on the widely varied landscapes of Arizona. Named in Stone and Sky includes works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; represents Native ...
The Mesoamerican Ballgame
The Missions of Northern Sonora
A 1935 Field Documentation
Infinite Divisions
An Anthology of Chicana Literature
Counting Sheep
Twenty Ways of Seeing Desert Bighorn
Counting Sheep
Imagine sending a number of nature writers out into the same unrelenting stretch of Sonoran Desert. Then consider telling them to focus their attention on just one animalOvis canadensis, popularly called the desert bighorn or borrego cimarrónand have them write about it. Have them write from makeshift blinds or from behind a gun barrel. Have them write while walking across the Cabeza Prieta at night, or while flying over it trying to radio-collar the creatures. Have them write from actual sightings of the animals or simply from their tracks and droppings.
What would result from such an exercise is Counting Sheep, an unusual anthology that demonstrates the range of possibilities in nature writing. While ostensibly a collection of writings about these desert sheep that live along the U.S.-Mexico border, it also represents an attempt to broaden the scope of the natural history essay.
Writers trained in a wide range of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences here offer a similarly diverse collection of writings, with women's, Hispanic, and Native American views complementing those in a genre long dominated by Anglo men. The four sections of the anthology comprise pre-Anglo-American tradition, examples of early nature writing, varied responses by modern writers to actually counting sheep, and a selection of essays that place bighorns in the context of the larger world.
Counting Sheep celebrates the diversity of cultural responses to this single animal species in its Sonoran Desert habitat and invites readers to change the way in which they view their relationship to wild creatures everywhere. It also shows how nature writers can delight us all by the varied ways in which they practice their craft.
Contributors:
Charles Bowden
David E. Brown
Bill Broyles
Julian Hayden
William T. Hornaday
Paul Krausman
Danny Lopez
Eric Mellink
Mauricio Mixco
Gale Monson
Gary Paul Nabhan
Doug Peacock
Kermit Roosevelt
Harley G. Shaw
Charles Sheldon
Peter Steinhart
Anita Alvarez de Williams
Terry Tempest Williams
Ann Zwinger
Beliefs and Holy Places
A Spiritual Geography of the Pimería Alta
Keepers of the Sacred Chants
The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society
Bone Dance
New and Selected Poems, 1965-1993
The Sound of Rattles and Clappers
A Collection of New California Indian Writing
Alaska
Reflections on Land and Spirit
Breaking Into the Current
Boatwomen of the Grand Canyon
Early Stages in the Evolution of Mesopotamian Civilization
Between 1969 and 1980, Soviet archaeologists conducted excavations of Mesopotamian villages occupied from pre-agricultural times through the beginnings of early civilization. This volume brings together translations of Russian articles along with new work.
Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache
The Mexican Border Cities
Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality
Bighorse the Warrior
Border People
Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Pastoralists at the Periphery
Herders in a Capitalist World
When Is a Kiva?
And Other Questions About Southwestern Archaeology
Returning the Gift
Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival
Sourcing Prehistoric Ceramics at Chodistaas Pueblo, Arizona
The Circulation of People and Pots in the Grasshopper Region
There Was a River
On October 7, 1962, Bruce Berger and three friends embarked on what may have been the last trip taken through the Colorado River's Glen Canyon before the floodgates were closed at Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell began to fill. After thirty years, one can grieve for what was lost and then, like Berger, take another look around.
The Southwest Berger sees is an unusual, even odd, place, with inhabitants that are just as strange. In this collection of essays he introduces us to people and places that define a region and a way of life. We meet eccentric desert dwellers like Cactus Pete, who claimed to have mapped the mountains of Venus long before NASA penetrated its clouds. We chart the canals of Phoenix, which have created a Martian landscape out of an irrigation system dating back to the ancient Hohokam; stay at a "wigwam" motel in Holbrook, whose kitsch appeals even to Hopis; and dim our lights for the International Dark-Sky Association's efforts to keep night skies safe for astronomy.
Focusing on the interaction of people with the environment, Berger reveals an original vision of the Southwest that encompasses both city and wilderness. In a concluding essay centering on the sale of his mother's estate in Phoenix, he concedes that "our intention to leave the desert alone has resulted, unwittingly, in loss after loss, simply by our being here." Sometimes there are lossesa canyon, a housebut Berger attunes us to the prodigies of change.