The first thing I think about when preparing for a trip is not what am I going to wear or pack, but what am I going to READ? I am a true believer that reading is the best way to get to know a place and to enrich any trip with an understanding of the land, history, and people. As I prepare for a trip to Arizona I wanted to share what books I’m reading. Hopefully you will find one to enrich your next trip to the land of desert and stone.

 

In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde

I love a good story that puts strangers together in uncomfortable situations. Twelve people come together for a trip of a lifetime; a two week long rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. It is a great mix of personalities including enthusiastic couples, parents with young boys, a teenager reeling with body image issues, a lonely middle aged female professor, and of course, some fun-loving, drinking river guides. The senior guide, though, is celebrating his 125th trip down the river. He was hoping for a straight forward and easy run, but these trips are never particularly predictable. This beautiful and subtle novel celebrates the impressions and developments in character that come with such epic adventures.

 

 

 

 

 

The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy

This beautiful and original ode to color sucked me in on the first page. Ellen is grieving the loss of her brother as she travels the desert Southwest to make her art. While she waits for her brother to speak to her through her paintbrushes and crayons, she observes the natural world down to its bones. Science and natural history is so effortlessly placed in the stories that you won’t even notice that you are learning some fascinating stuff. Ellen was renowned in literary circles for her exquisite nature writing when she suddenly and sadly passed away in 2004. Shortly before she died she wrote, “…in the desert there is everything and there is nothing. Stay curious. Know where you are—your biological address. Get to know your neighbors—plants, creatures, who lives there, who died there, who is blessed, cursed, what is absent or in danger or in need of your help. Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down.”

 

 

 

 

Pure Land by Annette McGivney

This fast-paced true crime story packs a punch. In 2006, a young Japanese nature lover named Tomomi Hanamure was brutally murdered at the popular hiking destination Havasu Falls in the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Her alleged killer was an 18 year old Havasupai. Annette McGivney traces both Tomomi and the young killer’s steps that led to the murder. But more than just a murder mystery, Annette dives deep into the history of the Havasupai reservation and its fraught ties with the National Park system and local authorities. She also gracefully builds Tomomi’s world as a young ambitious women who traveled to the US from Japan by herself and fell in love with the land of the American West and its native people. I could not put this book down and can’t recommend it enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Canyon Solitude by Patricia C. McCairen

When Patricia got a chance to raft the Grand Canyon and couldn’t find anyone to do it with her, she decided to just do it by herself. It is truly a grand undertaking and one not to be taken lightly. But she is a seasoned rafting guide and fiercely independent, and nothing was going to stop her from accomplishing her goal. She takes us along on her journey down the canyon, and also through her sometimes contradictory thoughts along the way. She knows the importance of solitude and certainly embraces it, but she also battles with the voices in her head that tell her she should be enjoying other’s company. It’s a state of mind that I can relate to, and Patricia does a lovely job of explaining these emotions while accomplishing something that has only been achieved by few.

 

 

 

 

The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie begins this memoir by telling stories of her walks into Tucson from her home in the foothills of nearby mountains. It is a desert, but what she finds on her daily walks is the stuff of beauty. She finds turquoise rocks that appear out of nowhere, and so much life, a seemingly unlikely find on the edge of the Sonoran Desert. Geology, history, and Native American lore spider through these stories like the dark veins of a turquoise gemstone in this important memoir about life in the Southwest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner

This is the incredible story of John Wesley Powell, a soldier who lost an arm in the Civil War and then went on to lead expeditions through the Grand Canyon in wooden boats, and in the Rocky Mountains and surrounding rivers. During his explorations, he found intrigue in the Native Americans and was ahead of his time in considering the affects and detriments that people can cause to the land. He was a staunch advocate of conservation and discouraged settlers from establishing farms that would tax the little available water in this arid land.

 

 

 

 

 

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