| Title | : | Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 140003177X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781400031771 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published September 13, 2005 |
| Awards | : | John Burroughs Medal (2007), Utah Book Award Nonfiction (2005), National Book Critics Circle Award General Nonfiction (2005) |
Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild Reviews
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One of those books that all riders on the planet would do well to consider reading. Meloy writes of a year spent with bighorn sheep in the mountains of southern Utah where she lived, with side trips to several other desert and mountain "islands", and how their teetering populations epitomize the risks of humankind losing a core feature its identity by a loss of the "wild."
This is "nature writing" which one could characterize as blending the poetry and emotional relationship of an Annie Dillard with the reflective ecology and anthropology of a Barry Lopez. The rapid loss of habitat and disturbed ecological balance for wild animals such as desert bighorn sheep have been struggled against for a long time through endangered species laws, development restrictions, and the work of scientists and wildlife managers. But below a safe population level for a given subspecies of wild sheep, factors such as diseases spread from domestic sheep, adverse weather, and mountain lion predation can easily wipe out a geographic population. This urgency contributed to Meloy's quest to personally experience the sheep in their remote environment and reflect on how such a relationship is a key to being human.
It is especially poignant that Meloy died suddenly three months after completing this book. She was beginning to suspect the beginnings of presenile dementia and found the desert mountains and work "tempered the panic." Just reading about her experiences, especially her final work transplanting sheep from one site to another promising, more isolated, range, also tempered the panic for me. She demonstrates that an individual can still experience real wildness in nature, and positive efforts can be taken. -
The writing in this book is beautiful... I seriously wanted my kindle in one hand and a paintbrush in the other because I'm sure my paintings would be as beautiful as the desert scenes Ellen Meloy paints with her words! Unfortunately, the beautiful writing did not save this book. The title is what attracted me to this book, I wanted to read about "Imagination" and being out in the Wild, but EM barely mentions it.
And I didn't learn much about Bighorn Sheep, either, other than they are pretty hard to find in the wild. Literally, she's half way through the book before she mentions that it's easy to recognize individual sheep in a band. I suppose she thinks in terms of the entire band and how sheep can't survive as individuals. Oh, except for Sheep 69, who she talks about often, who survived for years after her entire band was wiped out by disease (introduced by domesticated sheep and humans).
And finally the clincher for the One Star rating. EM eats sheep. Not only does she eat them, she ate one that had a name, who she had watched for years. Sheep 1,000 was a ram who had a radio collar, he was instantly recognizable and he was one of her friend's favorite rams, in fact. But when he was murdered by a legal hunter, who only wanted a trophy and gave away the corpse, EM had few compunctions about eating One Thousand.
That scene just broke my heart. It made me lose hope in humanity. -
"Where is the water? I describe a confluence of rivers hidden in folds of stone, a spring on the side of the mountain in land so holy, you must sing every footstep you place on it."
The concept for this book was a month-by-month collection of musings and discoveries over a year of observing the desert bighorn sheep of the U.S. and Baja, Mexico. Meloy begins the year in November with sheep sex. While I do find it remarkable that the rams' testicles expand to the size of cantaloupes during the mating season, I wasn't sure if I wanted to tackle an entire book devoted to that intimate gonadal level of sharing. Fortunately for me, Ellen Meloy was a generalist when it came to her love of the Southwest. The bighorns were her purpose for wandering, but along the way she shares healthy helpings of anthropology, archaeology, Native American lore, botany, history, environmental concerns, and a wit as dry as the desert she called home.
Meloy has a lot in common with Ed Abbey in her love for the desert and her distress over man's encroachment, but she takes a softer approach. She presents her concerns with a little more hope and a lot less misanthropy than that venerable curmudgeon.
Our deserts lost a redrock angel when Ellen Meloy died suddenly in November of 2004. -
This was an unexpected and disappointing miss for me. Perhaps it's the books description, or perhaps I should have anticipated prose mirroring "The Anthropology of Turquoise" that I fell in love with last year, but "Eating Stone" ultimately seemed a disconnected series of personal essays with an abstract central subject. True enough, the book is about bighorn sheep, or rather, centers around bighorn sheep, but this novel lacked enough substance on ungulates and enough diversity in thought to equal "The Anthropology of Turquoise."
Much of "Eating Stone's" first half is less about the Blue Door Band of sheep of Meloy's backyard, and more about sporadic adventures related to bighorns. I feel like I read more on Native American art, Spanish colonization of western California, gardening, and tortoises care in gardens than I did anything else. And to be fair, that is certainly Meloy's style, but here, while trying to glimpse the elusive and endangered sheep she constantly teases, I felt constantly jerked towards an obscure side story I had little interest in. Despite the undoubtedly beautiful writing style, this book was difficult for me to finish.
"Eating Stone's" saving grace are the last few months of Meloy's biographical work when a fellow band of naturalist and she transplant a portion the herd deeper into the wilderness to encourage habitat reclamation. Here I felt connected to the excitement and adventure that prompted the novel, and felt sure everything prior was filler. Then again, maybe like the Blue Door Band of bighorn sheep, instinct inhibits me from broadening my horizons and enjoying the story for what it is as opposed to what I wanted it to be.
I leave "Eating Stone" somewhere in the middle. I feel obliged to revisit as the summer months wane and I find myself not taking nature and the wildlife in close proximity to me for granted. For now, I'll continue to enjoy my own imaginative thoughts prompted by the bighorns of my backyard. -
I find sheep to be dull creatures. I say this as a dedicated conservationist, and one who firmly believes that all organisms have an innate right to exist, or at least to exist for as long as they can in the bloodthirsty battlefield of natural selection.
But Meloy writes about her bighorns with such unstinting love, and such poetry, that it becomes impossible not to fall in love with them yourself. Her avowed adoration of wild things is apparent in the way she describes a group of bighorns dozing lazily in the sunshine, and in tautly written action scenes where she deliberately upsets an Edenic scene of resting Canada geese to keep them away from (or at least give them a fighting chance against) early morning hunters.
I am sad that we lost Meloy so early, and with so many of her books unwritten. If this an
The Anthropology of Turquoise are anything to judge by, she was a gift to the world of nature writing. As it is, I will think of her, and the sheep now every time I look at the hoofstock at the National Zoo. And I will feel more warmly towards them, because she loved them and shared that love with me. -
3.5 stars
I'm not sure about this book if I'm entirely honest.
I absolutely loved The Anthropology of Turquoise and would put it down as one of my all time favourites. So I was deeply looking forward to this offering from Ellen Meloy.
It felt disjointed, fractured, distracted writing. Ellen Meloy even states a few times how she fears her mind is becoming increasingly muddled and chaotic, which comes through in the writing itself. I found myself putting the book down and my mind wandered to other things throughout (whereas with Anthropology my eyes were glued to the pages).
The elusive bighorn are treated as rather sacred and special creatures with a worthy history and culture. Despite this, as Rift Vegan mentions in their review, the party that Ellen is with decide to eat one of the bighorns once it is dead!!!
I don't know, I just felt the author had lost her spark on this piece. It didn't feel like the same woman writing. Still enjoyable but nowhere near the scintillating quality of Turquoise. -
A year spent with wild longhorn sheep and a moving treatise on wildness and its disappearance from the world.
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Ellen Meloy was one of those writers who found the connection between making visual art and painting with words. I could never do a fraction of the things she did. I don't have the stomach, the temperament, the stamina, the fearlessness of multi-legged wiggly critters, or the tolerance for excessive heat and UV exposure. But when deep into her writing, I sort of wish that I did.
Each chapter covers a month in a year that Meloy spent intensely observing a band of big horn sheep near her home in Bluff, Utah, as well as some other big horn environs in New Mexico and Southern California. On the surface, the book is about the sheep, their habitats and habits, their struggle to adapt and survive. Deeper down, the book is also about so many other things: immersion, solitude, imagination, endurance, and awe. The writing is beautiful and often has threads of fantastical musings, but Meloy is also a realist who understood that nature is under no obligation to make itself acceptable to human sentiments.
Eating Stone is Meloy's final book, and thanks should go to her husband for shepherding this beautiful writing through the final stages of publishing after Meloy's sudden death in 2004. The world is richer for her writing being in it. -
Finally finished this one. It's as dense as a thicket of nature and just as enjoyable. Everytime I glazed over something, eavesdropping in the subway say, she brought me right back in with a lovely line. Meloy's voice is so charming and she writes so many truisms about the human benefits gained from having a relationship with the natural world She makes me seriously consider dropping my entire life to go watch sheep in the desert.
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Such a good read! Ellen Meloy was often personal, frequently poignant, and always fascinating. Her observations about small town Utah life (she lived in Bluff) were as engaging as was her writings about desert bighorns, the primary topic of the book.
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This 2006 Banff Adventure Travel Writing award winner is quirky, funny, and so odd! Meloy graces the reader with deep insights about what it means to be “wild” today. Well worth the read! Do not hesitate one bit to pick up this book.
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Eating Stone by Ellen Meloy
The sentences vary from short staccato to lengthy scientific descriptions. And information content is very high in this lengthy and notable book on North America's wild sheep. There are nuggets peppered throughout and some purple prose and some tedious descriptions of town life and old descriptions of manuscripts. There is often a lack of mooring. The author, who is quite knowledgeable about many things Southwest, tends to move from one topic to another that are not always related to sheep. In a nutshell I found it hard to read in long book form. From a policy point of view the conclusions are simple but there is little vision on how to improve. The sheep are living in island environments. No mention of creating lengthy corridors to connect all the wild spaces for example.
There was a chapter on the lonely ewe who lived on a 100 square mile wildlife preserve with no other sheep. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It was evocative. This was an excellent chapter and an example of how good the book could have been. Another excellent chapter was on the Cosos region of the Mohave desert and all of the petroglyph rock art featuring sheep. I will admit the author's style grew on me though.
There are several interesting life experiences contained within. Meloy's knowledge of sheep and her personal observations make the read informative. But the writing style - well I didn't love it as it lacked pace and consistency. It is unique and imperfect.
3.5 stars. -
I wanted to like this. The subject, bighorn sheep in the Southwest, is interesting to me, and I want to learn more about them. I love good nature writing.
But while a lot of the writing is good, a fair amount isn't. Some of the imagery is jarring (e.g., mesas scudding under the clouds instead of vice versa), it can be repetitive (all the sheep look the same), it is often vague (she loves visiting a small museum in a small town---why not give us the names?). The worst part is that the book severely needs editing. Especially in the first half, so much of the story has nothing to do with bighorn sheep... or anything. This gets much better in the second half, when she joins a few scientists who study the sheep and relocate a band to try to expand their habitat.
I learned some about bighorn sheep, but much less than I wanted. -
I loved this book. It was a joy to read and has great phrases. She was unfortunately very prophetic regarding herself, "I am here to learn something-time is running out." (Did she know?)
This is a cautionary tale.
She tells it like it is.
I learned a new word: Philopatry: loyalty to the group and to their home range. And another new word: rupicaprid: mountain goat-antelope.
Many wonderful substories: Regarding Steinbeck: Pg 96 & 97: "On a hardwood plaque the crew mounted their trophy, a sheep turd."
If I wasn't already a big Steinbeck fan I would have become one.
"Sid is her rental turtle" (she lends him out to children.)
Learned a funny word: Bubbaglyphs: bullet holes.
Did I mention great phrases: "I wonder why six blondes would sit around in a bar in their underwear in the middle of the day. Maybe they can do something with my hair."
I could go on and on about this book. I think I'll read it again. -
A really well-written, lyrical book about one woman's love affair with a band of big horn sheep she names the Blue Door band living on the Colorado Plateau. She lives amongst them and travels their routes. To learn more about the role that big horns play in our landscape, she travels to New Mexico, California, Baja and Nevada to study other bands and examine petroglyphs. She even participates in a translocation effort to relocate a herd in Canyonlands. Melody is a great writer with an incredible attention to detail and an ability to describe things in a rich and poetic style. I want to read more of her books.
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I must paraphrase a review found on the cover of this book... as it applies perfectly. "Eating Stone is ..a work of power, beauty, wisdom, tenderness, and great humor. This book reminds me of what it is we love about reading great books: time stops, and a deeper understanding, a deeper way of being inhabits the reader." Ms. Meloy's writing pours our imagination into the southwest desert with her descriptive writing and gives us pause to wonder what our world would be like without it's wild parts. Her humorous touch is perfect! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in tune with our wild America and its potential loss caused by a lack of caring.
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Ellen Meloy monitored a band of desert bighorn sheep that she called the 'Blue Door Band' for a year. Her acclaimed book, the last she wrote before her unexpected death of a heart attack
http://www.ellenmeloy.com/tributes_hi... is more than a tale of the endangered species. Rather it is a revealing story of the connections between animals, humans, and their sometimes fragile environments. Learn more at the Ellen Meloy Fund website
http://www.ellenmeloy.com/ (lj) -
I'm rating a book I didn't finish, which makes me completely unqualified to issue any kind of rating. Here it is nonetheless.
I couldn't get into this. I don't doubt that it's an interesting read, but I had to force myself to finish just the first chapter. I didn't dislike it; I just didn't care to go on. -
Just when you've learned more about bighorn sheep than you might think you want to, Ellen Meloy grabs you by the hand and runs barefoot through a moonlit night to foil the rustlers. If you choose only one Meloy, pick The Anthropology of Turquoise. If you choose another, Eating Stone, published after her death, will help sate the addiction that could take hold of you.
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What a rich, dense tapestry of a read. A book to be savored slowly and the imagery enjoyed.
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Good god, this was beautiful. Reading it while in the desert, not so far from the Blue Door Band and their peers? Even better.
[5 stars for some of the best naturalist prose I've read.] -
Wow. Amazing imagery for our natural world. A delightful read.
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Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild by Ellen Meloy, ostensibly a book about a specific group of Bighorn Sheep is a beautiful rumination on the landscape of America's desert Southwest.
I discovered this book at Moab's excellent independent bookstore---- Back of Beyond Books--- on a recent trip to Utah's canyon country.
On the shelf between Edward Abbey and Craig Childs, both icons of Desert Southwest literature, Meloy proves herself a worthy witness to this incredible landscape. Less caustic and cranky than Abbey, Meloy presents the subject with a deft blend of pragmatic realism and eloquence. While she might agree with much of Abbey's conclusions, she is not yet as jaded. Unlike Childs, who focuses on the human inhabitants of this region historically, Meloy places the desert fauna squarely in the focus. Humans, including herself and a few felliw researchers, and one very interesting ex rocket scientist turned petroglyph guide, are largely observers on the periphery at best, direct threats without specific names at worst.
At one point she summarizes the odd paradox of modern American conservation perfectly--- the biggest supporters of wildlife conservation are the sportsmen (hunters), who pay and policy make to sustain the wildlife for the purpose of ultimately killing them in the hunt.
The book chapters are primarily the months of a year, with occasional diversions, as Meloy chronicles not only the annual life cycle of the Sheep but also describes her own travels across the range of wild Sheep from Utah to California.
Throughout her prose sings an eloquent description of the wild landscape without ever turning a blind eye in the unnatural intrusions of the anthropocene. The loss of imagination suggested in the subtitle is largely left to the reader to contemplate as Meloy makes a compelling argument that wild animals are intrinsically linked to our ability to imagine.
Science as described by Meloy provides a cursory portait of the non-human life with which we share our planet. Much of their existence and our understanding intersect in a realm of imagination and wonder we would be impoverished to lose. In fact, the essence of our understanding of ourselves relies upon the perpetuation of wild animals and wilderness. This is what I took from Meloy's thoroughly enjoyable trip through the desert Southwest, a landscape i have visited many times and sincerely love, and one i now feel intrinsically closer to.
One example of Meloy's writing:
"The animal-longing sector of my brain remains indefatigable. I set the shreds of my imagination to go the distance with all of nature's creations. I hunger for the quiet rapture of observation, the measure of time by the clock of blood, the exaltation that comes with the intimacy of beings so unlike ourselves in homelands so unlike our own". -
This is an absolutely magical book. Meloy's stories made me fall in love with the desert and with bighorn sheep, even though I've only ever seen them fleetingly beside the highway, feeling sorry for them being so close to danger. Her book was published in the early 2000's and since that time, life for bighorn sheep has only become more difficult with increasing development, more threats of disease from livestock grazing on public lands, and dwindling resources to help wildlife. As Meloy describes in her book, bighorn sheep aren't wild, they are "wild" - they are managed, counted, and watched over on small islands of land that are under constant pressure from pollution, development, extraction, and the recreation industry.
I read one passage describing the interior of a cafe at least 10 times because it so perfectly captures a scene with words, and is so brilliantly written. There are several passages in the book worth reading multiple times (especially if one is a connoisseur of good writing), and the entire book is captivating. It tells the story of a year in the life of one band of bighorn sheep close to the author's home, and includes stories of other adventures she took to learn more and try to see bighorn sheep in other regions.
That the author died shortly after finishing this book is a great loss. I can only imagine the work she would have gone on to create if she hadn't died too soon. -
“Homo sapiens have left themselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own worlds, an estrangement that leaves us hungry and lonely. In this famished state, it is no wonder that when we do finally encounter wild animals, we are quite surprised by the sheer truth of them.’
I loved Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise. My mind drifts back to it whenever I think about good nature writing. She taught me a great deal about the Southwest and I admire her sense of place. So, when I saw that I could borrow this book on Libby, I thought I would like to read more by Meloy.
Unfortunately, I think I did this book a great disservice. I was not in the right place to read about Meloy sitting still and waiting to see big horn sheep. I did not have the patience that this book requires. Or at least what I believe it requires.
The world is crashing down around us. Life is feeling hard. I know that in reality, I am safe, well-fed and taken care of. My privilege is keeping me secure – most of the issues do not directly affect me. However, I am feeling stressed and these stories only made me feel worse.
I know that is not Meloy’s intent. She had hopes that her books would remind us that nature is an essential part of being human and that we should take good care of the world and its inhabitants. She did not intend to overwhelm her readers with the futility of trying to save the big horn sheep. That I am crushed by the weight of what humankind has done to our planet is my problem not hers. However, my difficulties made me less interested in Meloy’s beautiful writing. I just kept lamenting the state of the world.
If you care about sheep or any part of nature, you may want to consider Meloy’s writings. Her sense of place, her words are all wonderful. We should all care about Earth as she did. I hope that if I find other essays by Meloy, I can open my heart to her words as I did her earlier book. She has valuable things to tell us. -
This was a very slow read for several reasons. The author’s forays into the wilderness and her multi-layered descriptions seem to slow time and require each sentence to be considered. This would not be for everyone but I liked it. Having seen big horned sheep this spring on their protected terrain while rafting the San Juan River, I resonate with her love of the ancient wildness these animals embody. She has been a part of this ecosystem for long enough to see the changes. “The spellbound threshold between humanity and the rest of nature is very nearly pulled shut to the latching point. Soon we shall turn our backs and walk away entirely, place-blind and terribly lonely.” Well said.
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When compared to natural history books like American Buffalo by Rinella or Coyote America, this book has something lacking that I can't put my finger on. I have a fascination with bighorn sheep and was excited to learn more about them, but this book was drowned with philosophical personal musings and to be blunt, I felt the author was pretty pretentious. I can see why someone else would like this, but it's just not for me.
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I picked this book up at the Visitors Center at Arches National Park in Utah hoping to get a sense of life in the area of Arches. I was not disappointed as author Ellen Meloy tells about a year spent watching desert bighorn sheep in a very thoughtful and introspective way and at the same time sharing the biology and history of this endangered species. This is a great read for those who love nature and the wild.
