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Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
ELLEN MELOY

Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild by Ellen Meloy
5 reviews (2005) (352p)
National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist

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Book Description
An inspired reflection on the bond between wild creatures and the human imagination, told as a chronicle of four seasons with a band of rare desert bighorn sheep.

Among the steep cliffs of Utah's canyonlands a band of rare desert bighorn sheep simply vanished. Although the word "extinct" was bandied about, their passing seemed to fit the downward spiral of native wildlife in the Southwest that began in the early twentieth century. Remote, isolated, and elusive, this band slipped through the cracks. The bighorns were gone. Then they came back.

We have allowed ourselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own world, Ellen Meloy writes, an estrangement that has left us lonely and spiritually hungry. Now, with generous empathy and wry humor, the award-winning author of The Anthropology of Turquoise describes the mystery of the bighorns' self-rescue. In the role of an "amiable, nosy neighbor," Meloy matches her seasonal geography to theirs, observing cycles of breeding and birth, predators and death, the exquisite match of animal to place, of blood and bone to a magnificent redrock canyon.

On backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels to Mexico, the Great Basin, and the Chihuahuan Desert, Meloy roams the rugged habitat of these intriguing and precarious natives. Throughout, we revel with her in the air, light, and dazzling colors of the high desert. Most of all, we come to understand why she finds that watching wild animals intensely is very much like prayer.


Other Award Winning Books by Ellen Meloy
The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy
5 reviews (2002) (336p) (PP Non)
Read Reviews | Visit this book's Amazon.com page

Ellen Meloy Award Stats
Major Prize* Nominations 2  
Unique Books Nominated for a Major Prize* 2  
Pulitzer Prize Wins 0  
Pulitzer Prize Nominations 1 The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit ·  
National Book Critics Circle Award Wins 0  
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominations 1 Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild ·  
National Book Award Wins 0  
National Book Award Nominations 0  
Man Booker Prize Wins 0  
Man Booker Prize Nominations 0  
PEN/Faulkner Award Wins 0  
PEN/Faulkner Award Nominations 0  

*Major Prize = Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award

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