The University of Arizona Press is the premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works in the state of Arizona. They disseminate ideas and knowledge of lasting value that enrich understanding, inspire curiosity, and enlighten readers. They advance the University of Arizona’s mission by connecting scholarship and creative expression to readers worldwide.
Being Comanche
The Social History of an American Indian Community
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 animal—Ovis canadensis, popularly called the desert bighorn or borrego cimarrón—and 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
