All the Wild and Lonely Places: Journeys in a Desert Landscape
Editorial Reviews
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The vast, sere Colorado Desert of southern California, on the verge of the coastal range east of San Diego, is a forbidding landscape. Its sandy flats are dotted with cattle skulls, its skies with vultures, its maps with names like Hellhole Canyon, Devil's Ditch, and Bone Wash. Yet, writes Lawrence Hogue in this lively natural history of the area, which includes Anza-Borrego State Park and the Salton Sea, the desert's fearful aspect has not kept fellow travelers from the place, seeking solitude, enlightenment, or gold.
Hogue examines the lifeways of the original desert peoples, the Cahuilla and Kumeyaay, who gathered staples like mesquite beans and farmed in scattered oases, and who taught the first Europeans who came to the desert essential survival skills. He also considers the history of those who came after them: cattle ranchers, miners, the odd bandit, and, later, the American military, which has used the desert as a training and proving ground. "The Cahuilla creation story is still going on," Hogue writes of the shattered landscape. "It is as if God has been driven out of this place, hounded out by howitzers and bombs and missiles."
All those armaments notwithstanding, much of the Colorado Desert remains little changed by the human presence. "At this scale of things," Hogue concludes, "the desert is truly eternal, far older and deeper than I can comprehend." His book is a well-crafted, learned companion for any voyage into that arid country. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
"All the wild and lonely places, the mountain springs are called now. They were not lonely or wild places in the past days. They were the homes of my people." --Chief Francisco Patencio, the Cahuilla of Palm Springs The Anza-Borrego Desert on California's southern border is a remote and harsh landscape, what author Lawrence Hogue calls "a land of dreams and nightmares, where the waking world meets the fantastic shapes and bent forms of imagination." In a country so sere and rugged, it's easy to imagine that no one has ever set foot there -- a wilderness waiting to be explored. Yet for thousands of years, the land was home to the Cahuilla and Kumeyaay Indians, who, far from being the "noble savages" of European imagination, served as active caretakers of the land that sustained them, changing it in countless ways and adapting it to their own needs as they adapted to it.In All the Wild and Lonely Places, Lawrence Hogue offers a thoughtful and evocative portrait of Anza-Borrego and of the people who have lived there, both original inhabitants and Spanish and American newcomers -- soldiers, Forty-Niners, cowboys, canal-builders, naturalists, recreationists, and restorationists. We follow along with the author on a series of excursions into the desert, each time learning more about the region's history and why it calls into question deeply held beliefs about "untouched" nature. And we join him in considering the implications of those revelations for how we think about the land that surrounds us, and how we use and care for that land."We could persist in seeing the desert as an emptiness, a place hostile to humans, a pristine wilderness," Hogue writes. "But it's better to see this as a place where ancient peoples tried to make their homes, and succeeded. We can learn from what they did here, and use that knowledge to reinvigorate our concept of wildness. Humans are part of nature; it's still nature, even when we change it."
All The Wild And Lonely Places: Journeys In A Desert Landscape,Lawrence Hogue,Island Press,1559636513,Anza-Borrego Desert,Anza-Borrego Desert (Calif.),Anza-Borrego Desert State Park,California,California - Local History,Description And Travel,Earth Sciences - Geography,Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Environmental conditions,History,History - General History,History - U.S.,Landscape,Mammals,Natural history,Nature/Ecology,United States - State & Local - General,American history,Geography,Local history,Science / Environmental Science,Travel writing,USA
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