Lizards on the mantel, burros at the door : a Big Bend memoir / Etta Koch with June Cooper Price ; photographs by Etta and Peter Koch and others.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koch, Etta, 1904- author.

Price, June Cooper, 1933- author.

Contributor:

Koch, Etta, photographer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Koch, Etta, 1904-.

Koch, Etta.

Koch family.

Frontier and pioneer life--Texas--Big Bend National Park.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Big Bend National Park (Tex.)--Description and travel.

Big Bend National Park (Tex.).

Big Bend National Park (Tex.)--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (217 pages) : illustrations, maps, photographs

Place of Publication:

Austin, [Texas] : University of Texas Press, 2009.

Summary:

A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a 23-foot travel trailer in tow, she anticipated no more than a civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized, "From the sheltered life of a city girl of moderate circumstances, I too would have to face the reality of frontier living." In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family's first years (1944-1946) in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking-and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months' long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One Mere Is Everybody?

Two The Long load to Texas

Three Under the Piiion Pines

Four exploring the Basin

Five Terlingua

Six Dignitaries

Seven Pets

Eight Polecats and Horses

Nine Boquillas

Ten Of Mountains and Basins

Eleven The Droken Blossom

Twelve Mama Has a Birthday

Thirteen The Winter of Change

Fourteen Reflections on the Rio Grande

Fifteen The Spa

Sixteen Into the Limestone Lodge

Seventeen Maggy

Eighteen Menagerie

Nineteen The Nail Comes on Holiday

Twenty first, do fill the water bucket

Twenty-one A Lizard, [Ike, and Other Winter Visitors

Twenty-two Mexican Wedding

Twenty-three The Steps That Led to Spanish

Twenty-four Have Some Deans?

Twenty-five Rocks of the Ages

Twenty-six Water Tales

Twenty-seven A Christmas to forget

Twenty-eight Flight

Twenty-nine Second Summer

Thirty On lop of Mt. Bailey

Thirty-one Kaufman's Draw

Epilogue

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-292-74597-4

OCLC:

1286806430