Mar 24, 2008, Eating Stone by Ellen Meloy


Meloy offers uncommon insights into our relationship with the wild in a vivid study of desert bighorn sheep. These animals live on the most arid and rugged of terrains. Hidden, mythologized, and coveted, once abundant, then nearly extinct, bighorns have staged a stupendous comeback in spite of dwindling habitats. After closely observing these ruminative and light-footed creatures in Utah, Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert, and the Sierra Nevada, and reading up on their biology and lore, Meloy animatedly describes supermodel-perfect rams, alert ewes, and lambs given to springing "straight up in the air like a piece of toast." Between witty, self-disclosing, and metaphor-spiked field notes, Meloy offers provocative reflections on restoration ecology and the "politics of wildlife" and muses over how the loss of animals and wilderness diminishes our imagination and sense of wonder. excerpted from Donna Seaman, Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ; Click here for another (lengthy) Review