Armadillo Ray

Book Description

Ray is a curious armadillo, and what he is most curious about is the moon. Ray wonders how it can have so many shapes and why it sometimes disappears. He decides to find out the answers to his questions by asking his desert animal friends, from the prairie dog to the desert grouse, each of whom has his own fanciful idea. But it isn't until Ray meets a wise old owl that he learns exactly what the moon is—and discovers that sometimes the truth is the most unbelievable explanation of all!
This enchanting story is brought to life by stunning oil pastel illustrations. Also included is an afterword giving a brief explanation of the phases of the moon, as well as a note about the role that the moon has played in legends around the world.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful book with beautiful interesting illustrations.......2004-07-10

Borrowed this from the library and am now buying it for our collection. The illustrations are so different and interesting. And the story is sweet, fun, and unique.

Reviewers missed the point.......2001-05-05

This beautifully illustrated book is the PERFECT introduction or supplement to a science lesson for primary or intermediate elementary-age children. The point of the book is simple: introduce children to a lesson on the Earth's moon. The actual explanation, listed at the end of the book, is purposely not included with the story, so that the teacher or parent can read it and guide the child into the scientific explanation. It also offers legends of the moon from other cultures which can also lead a child into a literature lesson - composing their own original folktale. The book will naturally lend itself to art interpretations after a child sees how gorgeous and simple the illustrations are. This book leads to creativity and knowledge!

A beautifully illustrated book with a simple story line.......1998-08-06

The illustrations carry this book along in its simple story of a little armadillo asking his desert friends about the moon. The pictures are bright, vivid, and appealing. The story line is simple, with the different desert animals offering their ideas of what is the moon, much as different cultures have different myths of the moon as well. The scientific explanation at the end is not too long for this age group. I would have liked for the text to have more about the desert life of Armadillo Ray, or his feelings, as the one shortcoming is that the text is not quite as involving as the illustrations.

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A wonderful story!
What if you had a seal on your sofa? A real seal!
The Summer of Cecily_ the best book of the summer!!!

The Summer of Cecily
Nan Lincoln
Manufacturer: Bunker Hill Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

A heart-warming and inspiring, true tale about the meeting of a creature of the land and a creature of the sea, of falling in love, and ultimately, having to say good-bye. It is also the story of a very special place, where an ordinary day can turn into an extraordinary adventure.

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful story!.......2006-12-01

Nan Lincoln's real-life story of finding a young seal is both heart-warming and informative; interspersing a history and background of Mount Desert Island amongst the story of Cecily. A very intersting and all-around wonderful book.

What if you had a seal on your sofa? A real seal!.......2004-06-03

Nan Lincoln's story of the summer she spent raising (with the permission of the authorities) an abandoned seal pup is the most endearing story I think I've ever read. Her tale of her struggles to get it to eat, swimming with it, riding around with a seal in the car, carting Cecily to the shore in a wheel barrow, then, finally, successfully integrating it back into nature is destined to be a classic. Ms. Lincoln has a wonderfully readable prose style and the story is absolutely unique. I can't imagine anyone not being delighted with it. A friend called it "a little jewel."

This is not a children's book, although it contains both photographs and sketches of her amazing experience and will be enjoyed by all ages. The youngest children won't be interested in her bits of history about Mount Desert Island, I suspect. Mom or Dad can skip those parts when reading out loud.

This should be a movie. Where's Michael Eisner when we need him

The Summer of Cecily_ the best book of the summer!!!.......2004-05-28

You're on a beach- the tide is coming in- you see an abandoned seal pup halfway under a rock. What would you do? When Nan Lincoln sees the pup on the beach in the early summer of 1976 she feels like she should adopt it, six hours later she decided to and she did. She named the pup Cecily. She keeps Cecily for the summer and finds ways to make her life as similar as it would be to the life of other pups. Cecily has an attitude that is expressed by Nan (in English not seal language) and is very funny to read about. In the first chapter however Nan mostly writes about the setting and her family which is also explained in chapter 2. Soon the book heats up and she finds Cecily and you are brought along on the ride of your life as you go through the summer with Cecily, Nan, and Nan's family. Each chapter brings a new laugh to the scene.
Nan has a unique writing style that is very descriptive and specific. She has written a very unique book that would be perfect for a 4th Grade read-aloud or an independent reading book for other grades as well as 4th Grade. Her writing style is also sometimes straying to short sub-topics of the story to help you understand other parts of the story. All in all I would give this book 5 star rating.

Customer Reviews:

Mysterious Mammal Behavior.......2003-04-03

How many people reading this know that badgers and coyotes sometimes enter into cooperative relationships in order to hunt more successfully? Elegant, artful, and playful illustations accompany a blunt text about hunger and duress during a drought in the U.S. Southwest. A single mother badger with two dependent pups teams up with an old coyote to hunt for food. Working together they are able to secure enough food for themselves as well as the two young pups. But when one pup is taken for food by an eagle, the mother badger takes the remaining pup and moves on. Eventually, the drought ends. Many of the pictures feature cross sections into the desert floor. Root masses, rocks, and rodent warrens are visible in the manner of an 'Ant Farm' toy. Each picture features shards of broken pottery embedded underground. There are also the ancient and crumbling structures left behind by the Anasazi people over a thousand years ago. The animals have inherited it all.
The author provides an engaging and educational 'afterward' to the story describing his fascination with the Southwest, the Anasazi and the behavior of coyotes and badgers. When he says that he has actually observed a coyote and a badger interacting cooperatively, I was glad that he was inspired to write this beautiful book.

Desert Puma: Evolutionary Ecology And Conservation Of An Enduring Carnivore

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Desert Puma: Evolutionary Ecology And Conservation Of An Enduring Carnivore
Kenneth A. Logan , and Linda L. Sweanor
Manufacturer: Island Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1559638672

Book Description

Scientists and conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of top carnivores to the health and integrity of fully functioning ecosystems. As burgeoning human populations continue to impinge on natural landscapes, the need for understanding carnivore populations and how we affect them is becoming increasingly acute.

Desert Puma represents one of the most detailed assessments ever produced of the biology and ecology of a top carnivore. The husband-and-wife team of Kenneth Logan and Linda Sweanor set forth extensive data gathered from their ten-year field study of pumas in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico, also drawing on other reliable scientific data gathered throughout the puma's geographic range. Chapters examine:

the evolutionary and modern history of pumas, their taxonomy, and physical description
a detailed description and history of the study area in the Chihuahua Desert
field techniques that were used in the research
puma population dynamics and life history strategies
the implications of puma behavior and social organization
the relationships of pumas and their prey

The authors provide important new information about both the biology of pumas and their evolutionary ecology-not only what pumas do, but why they do it. Logan and Sweanor explain how an understanding of puma evolutionary ecology can, and must, inform long-term conservation strategies. They end the book with their ideas regarding strategies for puma management and conservation, along with a consideration of the future of pumas and humans. Desert Puma makes a significant and original contribution to the science not only of pumas in desert ecosystems but of the role of top predators in all environments. It is an essential contribution to the bookshelf of any wildlife biologist or conservationist involved in large-scale land management or wildlife management.

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Desert adventures with biology

Two books for the price of one

The Beauties and Dangers of the Desert

A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape
Michael A. Mares
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674007476

Book Description

For most of us the word "desert" conjures up images of barren wasteland, vast, dry stretches inimical to life. But for a great array of creatures, perhaps even more plentiful than those who inhabit tropical rainforests, the desert is a haven and a home. Travel with Michael Mares into the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and the American Southwest and you will encounter a rich and memorable variety of these small, tenacious animals, many of them first discovered by Mares in areas never before studied. Accompanying Mares on his forays into these hostile habitats, we observe the remarkable behavioral, physiological, and ecological adaptations that have allowed such little-known species of rodents, bats, and other small mammals to persist in an arid world. At the same time, we see firsthand the perils and pitfalls that await biologists who venture into the field to investigate new habitats, discover new species, and add to our knowledge of the diversity of life.

Filled with the seductions and trials that such adventures entail, A Desert Calling affords an intimate understanding of the biologist's vocation. As he astonishes us with the range and variety of knowledge to be acquired through the determined investigation of little-known habitats, Mares opens a window on his own uncommon life, as well as on the uncommon life of the remote and mysterious corners of our planet.

Customer Reviews:

Desert adventures with biology.......2002-12-18

It is interesting that this book is being published for the first time since much of the material comes from Professor Mares's work with small desert mammals during the seventies. Mares, who is the Curator of Mammals and Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma is also the author of Encyclopedia of Deserts (1999). Perhaps he has been too busy to publish what is essentially a popular work. Since the book includes reports on his field work and that of his students into the nineties, maybe this book is a way of rounding out a career.

Regardless of the reason for the material finally finding publication, we are the better for it. Part memoir, part fieldwork journal, and part travelogue, A Desert Calling is that rare scientific tome that engages our adventurous spirit through a vivid and lively presentation while at the same time giving us a concrete sense of the animals and their habitats. As the late Stephen Jay Gould expresses it in the Foreword, Mares writes with "a verbal freshness (and a fine sense for a good yarn) that will delight even the most sophisticated urbanite...." (p. xi)

The book is also beautifully edited and presented with handsome page layouts. Chapter beginnings and major paragraph breaks feature photo icons of the small desert rodents that were the focus of much of Mares's work. The text is interspersed with black and white photos of animals and the forbidding desert climes that he and his fellow field biologists encountered on three continents. There are four maps to help us locate these places. Mares includes an appendix giving both the common and scientific names of species mentioned in the text organized geographically. There are 14 pages of suggestions for further reading ordered by chapter.

Mares's travels include the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in the American southwest, the Monte Desert and the Patagonia and Caatinga regions in South America, and the Dasht-i-Kavir in Iran and the Sahara in Egypt. He traveled to Argentina during the years of the Dirty War and was in Iran just before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He lived through blinding sandstorms and heat so oppressive that he sought relief in pig water and mud laced with pig feces. He endured stings from hoards of vicious insects in landscapes nearly as barren as the moon with shaded Fahrenheit temperatures in the 130's. (p. 181) He encountered bureaucratic obstruction that would try the patience of a saint, poverty that would move even Scrooge to tears, and enough danger to satisfy a jaded CIA agent.

But above all he reports on the animals and how they live. He includes the discovery of a number of new species and genera of mammals, and three major ecological findings, all having to do with convergent evolution. Seeking the animal in the Monte Desert of Argentina that is the analogue of the kangaroo rat of the North American Sonoran Desert he inexplicably finds none. But then by happenstance he becomes aware of an extinct marsupial skeleton collected by famed biologist George Gaylord Simpson that fits the expected convergence to a tee. Indeed the animal had gone extinct only a million years previous which explained why none of the other rodents had yet evolved to fill that niche. (p. 126)

Mares also demonstrates that the jerboa of the Sahara, which is taxonomically nearly identical to the kangaroo rat, a fact well know for many decades, is not the whole story. It turns out that their diets and therefore some parts of their anatomy, including their teeth of course and presumably their digestive systems, are more different than was previously supposed. Mares realized this because he discovered that while kangaroo rats are seed specialists, the convergent jerboas have a more varied diet including plants and even crickets. After some further research, Mares understood that the bipedal adaption of the jerboas and kangaroo rats is an adaptation to allow them to run (hop!) away from predators.

To my mind the most interesting discovery was that the rock hyraxes of Africa have a nearly exact counterpart in the rock cavies of Caatinga in Argentina. As Mares expresses it (p. 202), they "are about as distantly related as mammals can be, [but they] not only look alike, but are similar in almost all aspects of their reproduction, ecology, and behavior." In a splendid example of natural selection at work, Mares points to their unique but similar rock pile environments as strongly shaping their morphology and behavior.

Perhaps what Mares does best that other scientists that work in distant places do not always do so well is to shed light on not only the climate and the species but on the local people, what they are like and how they live. His description of the isolation of some of the people in the Monte and the Chaco ("El Impenetrable" in Spanish, which Mares calls a "land of thorns") in Argentina is almost like reading about lost tribes from ancient times. His encounters with locals sometimes reminded me of something from a wild west movie of my childhood.

Also very interesting was his account of the discovery of a new species, the golden vizcacha rat on pages 257-259. I also liked his touching recollection of coming home for Halloween just in time to join his two boys for trick or treating on page 275.

Bottom line: this engaging and colorful book allows us to experience the hard work, pure drudgery, quiet contentment, and the sometimes thrilling exhalation of field work through the eyes of a working scientist with a gift for exposition.

Two books for the price of one.......2002-08-13

Michael Mares' book grew on me enormously as I read it. The combination of his series of wild experiences along with his enthusiasm for the research puzzles he confronts made this book read almost like a double thriller. This could be read as a travel book, very much like Eric Hansen's books, with a bonus of learning a lot about nature, evolution, ecology, etc. Or, it could be read as a book of ecology and evolution with the bonus of extraordinary adventures. At first, I kept on reading the book more for the adventures and then realized that my excitement about the science was growing. I have never had a book sneak up on me in this way.

The Beauties and Dangers of the Desert.......2002-05-19

We are quite used to hearing about the rainforest and the worries about its loss. We hear less about the loss of deserts. Let the military test there, let off-track entertainment vehicles bounce there, let toxic wastes accumulate there; they are not good for much else, goes the common view. They are uncomfortable places to visit, and they can't be turned to agriculture. Michael A. Mares, in _A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape_ (Harvard), has a completely different view. Mares has spent his professional life studying the deserts of the United States, Argentina, Iran, and Egypt. He undoubtedly knows plenty about plants, insects, birds, and snakes of these areas, but he is a specialist in the mammals that have evolved to live in such harsh conditions. Desert rats, mice, armadillos, and gerbils have been his study, and he has here (note the double meaning of the title) assembled a description of his life's work, as well as an attempted explanation of just why he has spent so much time in places the rest of us could not stand. His thoughtful and funny stories are a sort of autobiography, and he has much to tell us about the exotic animals that he wants better appreciated.

There are some peculiar beasts out there. The kangaroo rat has a nose exquisitely tuned to find buried seeds, and can filter sixty seeds from sand in a second. There are penguins in the desert in Patagonia. There are a few rodents on different continents who can live on the leaves of the saltbush, leaves that have a protective outer layer of cells full of salt. They have special teeth, or in one case, special dental hairs, that strip away the inedible layer to get to the green below. There are deadly assassin bugs. Mares describes staying in some of the most unpleasant regions of the world, and admits that when he is busy with academia and home, he longs to get to the desert, but it works vice versa, too. He is almost killed by fungus infesting his lungs after climbing through guano deposits in a New Mexico cave. He is nearly crushed by trees falling during a storm on a bat hunt in Costa Rica. Some of the most surprising specimens described here are humans, and Mares has plenty of funny stories.

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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 Spring.

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."

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully written, illustrated and diversely fascinating........2007-04-03

I enjoyed getting to know more of the culture and practices (both past and present) of area Native American groups: the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla and more briefly other groups in the Baja and SoCal area. The case is made repeatedly for an inclusive view of a desert "wilderness" as more than just a park untouched/left alone, but skillfully stewarded by the desert's first human inhabitants.

Must-read for Californians.......2004-09-25

There must be more biomass contained in the paper that makes up all the copies of all the books in print about the American desert than there is left in the same desert.

A decade after his pancreas gave out, Ed Abbey's books fairly fly off the shelves. Terry Tempest Williams seems to come out with a new book every several months. From lyrical evocations of some guy's weekend hikes in the Superstitions to the yearly raft of new books on running the Colorado, a legion of tomes from the masterful to the mediocre seems to have said just about everything there is to say about the hyper-arid west. Nonetheless, new titles seem to hit the shelves every time you turn around. If John the Baptist had come out of the wilderness into a modern writers' workshop, I do believe he would have been contracted, in print and remaindered before the last locust leg stopped twitching in his beard.

In a less crowded field, Lawrence Hogue's All The Wild and Lonely Places; Journeys in a Desert Landscape might have attracted the attention it deserves when it came out in 2000. It's fairly popular in the San Diego area, which makes sense, given that most of the action takes place within sight of Anza-Borrego State Park. But I've not seen it in nature bookstores north of Mount San Jacinto.

That's a shame, for Hogue has offered up an intensely important book, relevant far outside the sun-drenched confines of San Diego and Imperial counties. All the Wild and Lonely Places may appear to be a collection of musings by a veteran desert hiker - and it is, one of the most appealing such in some time - but it's also a stealth polemic. It's not much of a stretch to call Hogue's work one of the most important books of the last decade on California's environment.

That's not to say the book isn't a pleasant, diverting read: it is amply so. Hogue's matter-of-fact voice and intimate familiarity with the land are refreshing, and he doesn't spend a lot of time using the desert as an excuse for introspection. Rather, he spends his time (and ours) trying to find out just how the Anza-Borrego area came to be the way it is. A quick tour of the land's tectonic origins and botanic paleontology sets the stage for the subject in which the book finds its true strength: the history of human interactions with - and attitudes about - the land.

European colonizers brought much more than cattle, cholera and Christianity to California when they arrived here: they also brought with them a distinct collection of attitudes about wilderness. Originally a negative, fearful abstraction whose sole value lay in the resources that could be civilized out of it, wilderness was partly redefined by nineteenth and twentieth century environmentalists into a source of inspiration, communion, meaning. Other than the signs at the boundary fence, there's not much to distinguish the new, benevolent wilderness from the menacing version feared by our great great great grandparents. Both are valuable for what can be taken away from them, whether timber or solitude, gold or grandeur. And both are, by definition, untouched by people; outside the walls of human society.

Problem is, in California - and elsewhere in the west - it weren't necessarily so. The summits of high mountains may well have been avoided as sacred places. It's hard to picture people getting much use out of wide alkaline playas. But most of the rest of California - valley grassland, Sierra forest, coastal oak savanna - was intensively managed by the people living here. This isn't news: Kat Anderson and Thomas Blackburn devoted their book Before the Wilderness to these practices almost a decade ago. Native Californians set fires to clear encroaching brush, they moved plants from one place to another, they built dams to turn small creeks into seasonal wetlands. Very little of the state was unaffected by native land management practices. There wasn't much wilderness in the state until the white folks brought it here.

Hogue writes at some length about the Kumeyaay, whose traditional territory stretched from the coast to the Algodones sand dunes, and across what's now the Mexican border well into Baja California, as well as about the Cahuilla, the Kumeyaay's northern neighbors.

By regularly burning over their land, the Kumeyaay maintained thriving grasslands now in retreat throughout the southland. (A wetter climatic cycle that ended around 1900 probably played a role as well.) They may have introduced the "wild" California fan palms to the oases they now grace, bringing seeds or seedlings from Baja. They hunted and killed the occasional puma - after giving the cat fair warning - thereby helping sustain populations of the now-endangered peninsular bighorn.

They also committed acts of agriculture. This will come as surprising news to those of us brought up on the canonical observation that California Indians never farmed, aside from the irrigated gardens of the Yuman tribes. The Kumeyaay didn't plow the earth, but they did engage in a form of no-till agriculture that might as well have been taught by Masanobu Fukuoka. They planted grasses, harvested and saved seeds, and planted again the next season, slowly breeding large-seeded cultivars about as wild as red winter wheat.

This is the landscape that the colonists found. Calling it a wilderness is a bit of a stark judgment of the prior inhabitants. When you call a forest a wilderness, despite the clear fact that it's been intensively tended, you're saying something about the people that tended it. If it's land untouched by human hands, then clearly the hands managing it have been something less than human. We moved into this house and said the builder never existed.

Gary Nabhan, who for years has written about the Tohono O'odham and their neighbors in the Sonoran Desert, tells of the oasis at Quitobaquito, once a thriving settlement right on the US-Mexico line, now part of Organ Pipe National Monument. When the Tohono O'odham lived there, the spring-fed pond was a spectacularly diverse assemblage of bird and plant life. Under the protection of the National Park Service, biodiversity has declined to the point that on a visit a few years back, I saw perhaps five bird species there in two hours. A similar oasis across the line in Mexico, still fringed by small O'odham family farm plots, still bears diversity like that Quitobaquito once hosted.

When the Kumeyaay, the facilitators of San Diego's biodiversity, were denied access to most of their land, says Hogue, that biodiversity likewise started to decline. Grazing cattle had something to do with that decline, of course, as did a litany of other environmental events Hogue catalogs. There's tamarisk, the bane of desert wetlands, imported as an ornamental windbreak and now sucking the life out of watercourses from Texas to Torrey Pines Reserve. The US military used part of the Anza-Borrego area for target practice; live ordnance is now a permanent addition to the landscape. Off-road vehicles scar much of what the Pentagon left alone, though an observer less charitable than Hogue might suggest that unexploded bombs pose a potential solution to that vector for damage.

The ferocity with which Anglo-Californians treated the landscape was reflected in their dealings with the Kumeyaay. Hogue gives a brief but compelling description of the Jacumba Massacre, sparked by a few missing cattle, a two-hour gun battle that may have killed a dozen or two natives, and certainly drove any survivors out of the Jacumba area. In an ironic twist, even belated attempts to protect the land compounded the damage to the Kumeyaay, who made up much of the ranching population barred from Anza-Borrego State Park a quarter century ago.

Though the material compels anger, Hogue is no browbeating ideologue. He's sympathetic to the white settlers who populated the land. That's sensible, as he's one of them.

He may not get that sympathy returned from all quarters. In a day when environmental activism is still informed by long-discarded ecological concepts such as the "balance of nature" and ecological "communities," pointing out the capricious, stochastic nature of environmental change in the Far West can earn you green detractors.

Nonetheless, the nature of nature in California has far less to do with stable climax forests and regular predator-prey cycles than would be the case in the Pine Barrens or the Schwartzwald. Out here, it's all landslides and flash floods, lakes drying into toxic chemical flats and rivers changing course. Hogue does a great job conveying the consequences of the last two in his chapter on the Salton Sea, avoiding the tempting easy answers. Do we spend billions to restore the accidental lake to non-toxicity, providing habitat for white pelicans and real estate speculators? Or do we let the sump dry up, sending the water to the critically ill Colorado River Delta? Either way, we may well be trying to make a decision that's best left to the river, which has filled the Salton Sea (Lake Cahuilla) at somewhat random intervals over the millennia, then changed course to let the sea turn to sun-baked mud.

We would do well to consider the native way of looking at this natural unpredictability, and Hogue's portrayal is an enjoyable shattering of common preconceptions on the subject. The most prevalent of those preconceptions is the one that leads people to speak of Indians in the past tense, but those native ways of looking at the land aren't entirely lost. The Kumeyaay Campo Environmental Protection Agency is restoring wetlands on tribal land using traditional techniques, and the plants and animals are responding. Far to the north, a consortium of tribes works to restore the Sinkyone Intertribal Park on the Lost Coast. The California Indian Basketweavers' Association is changing the way land managers use herbicides in wildlands throughout the state, and the Timbisha Shoshone may yet win the right to tend much of the landscape in their traditional territory in Death Valley National Park.

Mainstream environmentalists often ignore these initiatives, if they don't actively oppose them - as has been the case with the Timbisha. This is unfortunate. No one would be served if environmentalists uncritically adopted policies just because Indians said we should. But the least we can do is agree that the homebuilder exists.

We might even ask for a copy of the blueprints.

Almost all I ever wanted to know.......2000-10-20

Vastly expanded my consciousness regarding the desert I love. A beautifully written book based on a tremendous amount of personal experience, research, and soul searching.

Not too much, not too little.......2000-08-01

A near-perfect blend of anthropology, geology, human and natural history, it is the thorough overview of the Anza-Borrego Desert that I was looking for. There is no preaching or strong advocacy for either conservation or exploitation of the region, but rather a balanced presentation of the various viewpoints of a surprisingly large number of stakeholders. The easy-going tone and pacing make for an enjoyable read. There is a storytelling quality about the writing that drew and held my attention firmly but pleasantly. There was enough technical detail to flesh out the themes but not so much detail that I felt overwhelmed. The only exception was the chapter on the Salton Sea which included, perhaps necessarily, quite a bit of information on past and current politics regarding the handling of this unique area. While there were parts of the book that challenged my previous impression of the desert as "untouched" and "pristine" - and made me wonder if I really wanted that impression challenged - ultimately my attraction to the desert became more informed, not spoiled.

Denizens of the desert;: A book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger

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Denizens of the desert;: A book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger
Edmund C Jaeger
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Moon of the Wild Pigs (The Thirteen Moons)

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The Moon of the Wild Pigs (The Thirteen Moons)
Jean Craighead George
Manufacturer: Harpercollins Childrens Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Zoology | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0060202637

Average customer rating:

Beautiful imagery, poetry, and message
Beautiful imagery, poetry, and message
Excellent story in poetic form regarding all desert animals.

Coyote Concert on a Full Moon Night
Carol Whelihan-Scherer
Manufacturer: Northword Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 155971669X

Book Description

All the creatures of the desert gathered to hear the story. Snakes and bats and mountain lions drew near. Then came long-eared hares and prairie dogs and road runners and more. The coyotes began to tell the tale of the world. They sang in praise of nature and how we must nurture the life in the land. It is a timeless message to cherish forever.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful imagery, poetry, and message.......2003-11-03

This is a book my daughter and I very much enjoy reading together. The illustrations of the nighttime desert are beautiful, and we enjoy finding the rocks shaped like coyotes. The rhymes flow well, don't feel forced like some kids books. And the themes of music, nature, the changing of the seasons, and respect for all life leave me with a peaceful feeling. Make sure to really emphasise the yip, yi, and yo when the coyotes begin to sing :)

Beautiful imagery, poetry, and message.......2003-11-03

Excellent story in poetic form regarding all desert animals........1998-12-15

This book is a lovely story done in expressive, poetic form detailing all the characteristics of the individual desert animals. The pictures are striking, done in many of the warm desert colors. It is an enjoyable read that very easily creates imaginative pictures for both the reader and the listener, enhancing the rich illustrations.

Average customer rating:

Desert Mammals (True Book)
Elaine Landau
Manufacturer: Children's Press (CT)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0516260979

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