Fear falls away and other essays from hard and rocky places / by Janice Emily Bowers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bowers, Janice Emily.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Natural history.

Mountains.

Santa Catalina Mountains (Ariz.)--Description and travel.

Santa Catalina Mountains (Ariz.).

Mountains--Arizona--Description and travel.

Natural history--Arizona--Santa Catalina Mountains.

Bowers, Janice Emily.

Arizona--Santa Catalina Mountains.

Arizona.

Physical Description:

viii, 158 pages ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Fear falls away

Place of Publication:

Tucson : University of Arizona Press, [1997]

Summary:

Jan Bowers lives in the right place. A lover of nature and the outdoors, an avid hiker and backpacker, she is surrounded by mountain ridges, peaks, and canyons of almost every description. In this book, she invites us to come along and find out why some of these places are special, why some of them stay in her mind long after she has returned to the workaday world of the city.

Readers have come to expect the best from this writer, termed "a rare talent... uncommonly good at the craft" by Wilderness magazine. Her new book is filled with creeks and meadows, tiny ferns and towering oaks, bears and butterflies and Red-tailed Hawks. We see gray clouds clogging the sky in a canyon, "wildly, almost tastelessly romantic, as full of clouds as a tea kettle with steam", and we startle a female grouse and her half-dozen fuzzy chicks "exploding from underfoot like billiard balls scattered with a cue stick".

Faced with the prospect of moving to another place, Bowers finds herself thinking about the familiar world in new and unfamiliar ways. Through her eyes, too, we see how an interest in nature and the outdoors developed from early childhood and how simple curiosity has led her to the most surprising discoveries. At odd and unexpected moments, her work also seems to bring new insights into herself and her life as a writer, a wife, and a mother.

These pages promise a new adventure at every turn in the trail. For sheer terror, there's a climb up the face of Baboquivari; for laughs, there's the great bagworm caper, and for some quiet truths, there are themes of gain and loss, of connection and reconciliation. Crunching through winter snow or sweating under summer sun, we know we're in the handsof an experienced guide. And we know we couldn't ask for a better companion.

Contents:

Remembering mountains

The gate swings wide : Tumamoc Hill, Tucson Mountains

Written rock : Signal Hill, Tucson Mountains

A tango with bears : Ramsey Canyon, Huachuca Mountains

Too cold for comfort but not for joy : Phone Line Trail, Santa Catalina Mountains

The brome among the poppies : Blackett Ridge, Santa Catalina Mountains

Unblinkered eyes : Sabino Canyon, Santa Catalina Mountains

Living without walls : Sunnyside Canyon, Huachuca Mountains

Encumbered : Scotia Canyon, Huachuca Mountains

Still hunting : Hospital Flat, Pinaleño Mountains

A broken mountaintop : Mount Graham, Pinaleño Mountains

From botanist to bagworm lady : Rucker Canyon, Chiricahua Mountains

High summer in heaven : Ash Creek, Pinaleño Mountains

Looking into clear water : Box Canyon, Santa Rita Mountains

Gifts given and received : Oracle Ridge, Santa Catalina Mountains

Walking through memory : Lefthand Canyon, Pinaleño Mountains

Writing the future : Miller Peak, Huachuca Mountains

Fear falls away : Baboquivari Peak, Baboquivari Mountains

Water music : Bear Canyon, Huachuca Mountains.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [155]-158).

ISBN:

0816517177

0816517185

OCLC:

36364148