Counting sheep : twenty ways of seeing desert bighorn / edited by Gary Paul Nabhan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nabhan, Gary Paul.

Series:

Southwest Center series

The Southwest Center series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bighorn sheep.

Bighorn sheep hunting.

Bighorn sheep--Folklore.

Genre:

Folklore.

Physical Description:

xx, 261 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Tucson : University of Arizona Press, [1993]

Summary:

Imagine sending a number of nature writers out into the same unrelenting stretch of Sonoran Desert. Then consider telling them to focus their attention on just one animal - Ovis canadensis, popularly called the desert bighorn or borrego cimarron - and have them write about it. Have them write from makeshift blinds or from behind a gun barrel. Have them write while walking across the Cabeza Prieta at night, or while flying over it trying to radio-collar the creatures.

Have them write from actual sightings of the animals or simply from their tracks and droppings. What would result from such an exercise is Counting Sheep, an unusual anthology that demonstrates the range of possibilities in nature writing. While ostensibly a collection of writings about these desert sheep that live along the U.S.-Mexico border, it also represents an attempt to broaden the scope of the natural history essay. Writers trained in a wide range of disciplines.

Spanning the natural and social sciences here offer a similarly diverse collection of writings, with women's, Hispanic, and Native American views complementing those in a genre long dominated by Anglo men. The four sections of the anthology comprise pre-Anglo-American tradition, examples of early nature writing, varied responses by modern writers to actually counting sheep, and a selection of essays that place bighorns in the context of the larger world. Counting Sheep.

Celebrates the diversity of cultural responses to this single animal species in its Sonoran Desert habitat and invites readers to change the way in which they view their relationship to wild creatures everywhere. It also shows how nature writers can delight us all by the varied ways in which they practice their craft.

Contents:

Introduction: Diversity in Desert Wildlife Writing / Gary Paul Nabhan

O'odham Bighorn Sheep Songs / Danny Lopez

When the Spring of Animal Dreams Runs Dry ... / Gary Paul Nabhan

On Sheep Cremations and Massacres / Julian Hayden and Friends

Kiliwa Mountain Sheep Traditions

Painted Caves and Sacred Sheep: Bighorn Ethnohistory in Baja California / Anita Alvarez de Williams

Diversions in Picturesque Game-Lands: The Wildest Corner of Mexico / William T. Hornaday

The Sheep of the Desert / Kermit Roosevelt

An Expedition to the Sierra del Rosario: Sonora, 1916 / Charles Sheldon

The Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge Water Hole Counts / Gale Monson

Counting Sheep

The Hard Way / Bill Broyles

The Heat Treatment / Charles Bowden

Of White-Winged Doves and Desert Bighorns / Ann Zwinger

Confessions from a Sheep Blind / Gary Paul Nabhan

All That Is Hidden / Terry Tempest Williams

Looking for Sheep / Peter Steinhart

Rambo: The Desert Bighorn Sheep as a Masculine Totem / David E. Brown

The President Spoke / Eric Mellink

Only Prey / Harley G. Shaw

The Exit of the Last Wild Mountain Sheep / Paul R. Krausman

Counting Sheep / Doug Peacock.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version: Counting sheep.

ISBN:

0816513856

9780816513857

0816513988

9780816513987

OCLC:

27768828