A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden

A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden PDF Author: Janice Emily Bowers
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816533245
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The frustrations and pleasures of gardening are evident; its implications for life are more subtle, lurking under a leaf or buried in a compost pile. Janice Emily Bowers senses these implications, and communicates them as only a fine writer can. In A Full Life in a Small Place, she shows how backyard gardening opens up a broader appreciation of both life and living. Her observations on organic gardening inspire further meditations on nature and wildlife, and demonstrate how gardens both complicate and enrich our lives. In their entirety, these sixteen essays ask how we shall live, and recognize that "before we can determine how, we need to find out why."

A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden

A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden PDF Author: Janice Emily Bowers
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816533245
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book

Book Description
The frustrations and pleasures of gardening are evident; its implications for life are more subtle, lurking under a leaf or buried in a compost pile. Janice Emily Bowers senses these implications, and communicates them as only a fine writer can. In A Full Life in a Small Place, she shows how backyard gardening opens up a broader appreciation of both life and living. Her observations on organic gardening inspire further meditations on nature and wildlife, and demonstrate how gardens both complicate and enrich our lives. In their entirety, these sixteen essays ask how we shall live, and recognize that "before we can determine how, we need to find out why."

Literary Nevada

Literary Nevada PDF Author: Cheryll Glotfelty
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874170125
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 902

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Book Description
Over 200 writings about Nevada with selections from Native American tales to contemporary writings on urban experience and environmental concerns. The state of Nevada embodies paradox and contradiction—home to one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and to isolated ranches scattered across a sparsely populated backcountry. Nevada is a place where the lust for sudden wealth has prompted both wild mining booms and glittering casinos, and where forbidding atomic test sites coexist with alluring tourist meccas. The variety and distinctiveness of Nevada’s landscape and peoples have inspired writers from the beginning of immigrant contact with the region. This contact has produced abundant literary wealth that includes the rich oral traditions of Native American peoples and an amazing spectrum of contemporary voices. Literary Nevada is the first comprehensive literary anthology of Nevada. It contains over 200 selections ranging from traditional Native American tales, explorers’ and emigrants’ accounts, and writing from the Comstock Lode and other mining boomtowns, as well as compelling fiction, poetry, and essays from throughout the state’s history. There is work by well-known Nevada writers such as Sarah Winnemucca, Mark Twain, and Robert Laxalt, by established and emerging writers from all parts of the state, and by some nonresident authors whose work illuminates important facets of the Nevada experience. The book includes cowboy poetry, travel writing, accounts of nuclear Nevada, narratives about rural life and urban life in Las Vegas and Reno, poetry and fiction from the state’s best contemporary writers, and accounts of the special beauty of wild Nevada’s mountains and deserts. Editor Cheryll Glotfelty provides insightful introductions to each section and author. The book also includes a photo gallery of selected Nevada writers and a generous list of suggested further readings. Nevada has inspired an exceptionally rich panorama of fine writing and a dazzling array of literary voices. The selections in Literary Nevada will engage and delight readers while revealing the complex and exciting diversity of the state’s history, people, and life.

Uneasy Rider

Uneasy Rider PDF Author: Mike Bryan
Publisher: VNR AG
ISBN: 9780679416715
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
"Engagingly curious open-mindedness . . . an amiable deadpan worthy of Richard Ford." --Pico Iyer, Time in this offbeat and original road book, cultural observer Mike Bryan takes issue with the traditional idea that the "real" America is to be found somewhere on our scenic backroads. He argues instead that it is right out in the open on the interstates, and he travels the big highways of the Southwest to prove the point. Bryan engages motel operators, state troopers, and traveling salesmen. He discovers the world's only "No Smoking" ranch; hobnobs with elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy; spars with Bob Sundown, who prefers his covered wagon to any car. Between encounters he contemplates everything from America's pioneering spirit to its history of road building. In the end, he discovers that the interstates, far from producing the homogenous society he feared, nourish a rich community of eccentrics. And that ultimately, as this deeply romantic travelogue shows, there is no such thing as an "ordinary American." "A wonderful writer, he manages to transmit his enjoyment of the places and people he encounters." --Austin American-Statesman "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Sonoran Desert Plants

Sonoran Desert Plants PDF Author: Raymond M. Turner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816547939
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
The Sonoran Desert, a fragile ecosystem, is under ever-increasing pressure from a burgeoning human population. This ecological atlas of the region's plants, a greatly enlarged and full revised version of the original 1972 atlas, will be an invaluable resource for plant ecologists, botanists, geographers, and other scientists, and for all with a serious interest in living with and protecting a unique natural southwestern heritage. An encyclopedia as well as an atlas, this monumental work describes the taxonomy, geographic distribution, and ecology of 339 plants, most of them common and characteristic trees, shrubs, or succulants. Also included is valuable information on natural history and ethnobotanical, commercial, and horticultural uses of these plants. The entry for each species includes a range map, an elevational profile, and a narrative account. The authors also include an extensive bibliography, referring the reader to the latest research and numerous references of historical importance, with a glossary to aid the general reader. Sonoran Desert Plants is a monumental work, unlikely to be superseded in the next generation. As the region continues to attract more people, there will be an increasingly urgent need for basic knowledge of plant species as a guide for creative and sustainable habitation of the area. This book will stand as a landmark resource for many years to come.

Outdoors in the Southwest

Outdoors in the Southwest PDF Author: Andrew Gulliford
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806145536
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
More college students than ever are majoring in Outdoor Recreation, Outdoor Education, or Adventure Education, but fewer and fewer Americans spend any time in thoughtful, respectful engagement with wilderness. While many young people may think of adrenaline-laced extreme sports as prime outdoor activities, with Outdoors in the Southwest, Andrew Gulliford seeks to promote appreciation for and discussion of the wild landscapes where those sports are played. Advocating an outdoor ethic based on curiosity, cooperation, humility, and ecological literacy, this essay collection features selections by renowned southwestern writers including Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Craig Childs, and Barbara Kingsolver, as well as scholars, experienced guides, and river rats. Essays explain the necessity of nature in the digital age, recount rafting adventures, and reflect on the psychological effects of expeditions. True-life cautionary tales tell of encounters with nearly disastrous flash floods, 900-foot falls, and lightning strikes. The final chapter describes the work of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, and other exemplars of “wilderness tithing”—giving back to public lands through volunteering, stewardship, and eco-advocacy. Addressing the evolution of public land policy, the meaning of wilderness, and the importance of environmental protection, this collection serves as an intellectual guidebook not just for students but for travelers and anyone curious about the changing landscape of the West.

Design with the Desert

Design with the Desert PDF Author: Richard Malloy
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1439881383
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
Typical development in the American Southwest often resulted in scraping the desert lands of the ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. This transdisciplinary book explores the natural and built environment of this desert region and introduces development tools for shaping its future in a more sustainable way. It offers valuable insights to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and in other ecologically fragile regions around the world.

A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert

A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert PDF Author: Steven John Phillips
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520287479
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
"The landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region varies dramatically from parched desert lowlands to semiarid tropical forests and frigid subalpine meadows... "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert" takes readers deep into its vast expanse, looking closely at the relationships of plants and animals with the land and people, through time and across landscapes"--

Landscape Archaeology

Landscape Archaeology PDF Author: Rebecca Yamin
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870499203
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
As the editors note, "This volume includes many searching looks at the landscape, not just to understand ourselves, but to understand the context for other peoples' lives in other times, to unravel the landscapes they created and explain the meanings embedded in them.".

Bringing Home the Wild

Bringing Home the Wild PDF Author: Juliet C. Stromberg
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816550271
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
"This book follows a two-decade journey in urban conservation gardening on a four-acre irrigated parcel in Phoenix, Arizona, from the perspective of a retired botanist and her partner. Through a playful use of language and humor, the book not only introduces the plants who are feeding them, buffering the climate, and elevating their moods but also presents the animals and fungi who are pollinating the plants and recycling the waste. This work shows all of us the importance of observing, appreciating, and learning from one's surrounding ecosystem"--

What Wildness Is This

What Wildness Is This PDF Author: Susan Wittig Albert
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292716303
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A collection of short stories, poems, and essays written by women who share the experiences of living in the Southwest.