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
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The following summary of our March 24 discussion of Eating Stone was communicated by Lorne Peterson via email:
Eight of us met last night at the Woodend Library to exchange thoughts and views about Eating Stone.
I found the discussion interesting. There were varying views on the way Ellen Meloy reported her experiences of watching and getting to know desert Bighorn Sheep in the Southwest. Some would have like more focused and in-depth narratives on what she observed and learned. Yet, most everyone appreciated her expressions of concern for the loss of wildness in the land, and for the animals who inhabit these places of nature. One of Ellen Meloy’s fears was that wild animals are not only losing their habitats, but are also becoming too managed and manipulated. They are losing the inherent wildness that makes them who and what they are. We human beings, animals too, would then lose an irreplaceable source of inspiration and insight for learning to live well in the land.
There is hope though in Meloy’s stories of the desert Bighorn Sheep and our human attempts to preserve them. She participates in translocating twenty-four bighorns to a better habitat. One where they would be more protected from the encroachments and dangers of human activities, particularly diseases from domestic sheep. The sensitivity and care with which these desert Bighorn Sheep are captured and moved to new home ground was, for me, one of the most moving parts of the book. Wildlife biologists are attempting to preserve and restore desert Bighorn Sheep, and other large animals, with finely honed approaches that are the least stressful and most respectful for these wild inhabitants of the land.
Ellen Meloy imagined learning much from the trans-located desert Bighorn Sheep:
“To watch these twenty-four sheep stake out their place, establishing their fidelity to it, for the first time would be to witness everything that makes this animal what it is, its evolution and its hunger, its seamless, nearly molecular bond to landscape. To see how they map the stone would be to know this canyon with extraordinary intimacy. To see how they do it would be truly to learn something.”
Best wishes for Spring,
Lorne Peterson
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