Eating Stone - by Ellen Meloy (Paperback)

About the Book

"Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2005"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

Long believed to be disappearing and possibly even extinct, the Southwestern bighorn sheep of Utah's canyonlands have made a surprising comeback. Naturalist Ellen Meloy tracks a band of these majestic creatures through backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels across the Southwest. Alone in the wilderness, Meloy chronicles her communion with the bighorns and laments the growing severance of man from nature, a severance that she feels has left us spiritually hungry. Wry, quirky and perceptive, Eating Stone is a brillant and wholly original tribute to the natural world.

Review Quotes

"Piercingly beautiful. . . . Its chapters map a vibrant, curious mind in love with the particulars of the Southwest landscape." -The New York Times Book Review"One of our finest natural-history writers. . . . Her own knowledge of the natural world is deep, her prose breathtakingly beautiful and often startling." -Annie Proulx, Globe & Mail"A major contribution to an understanding of the land. . . . Meloy's genius seems evident on every page of this thoughtful, impressionistic book."-Deseret News "One of the American West's greatest contemporary naturalists. . . . More than a mere adventure, Eating Stone concludes Meloy's love affair with the western desert and the wildlife it nourishes."-Outside MagazineBeautiful. . . . Not since Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard has an author transported us so completely into the wilderness."-The Plain Dealer

About the Author

ELLEN MELOY, a recipient of a Whit-ing Foundation Award in 1997, was a native of the West and lived in California, Montana, and Utah. Her previous book, The Anthropology of Turquoise, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Utah Book Award and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Award in the adventure and travel category. She is also the author of Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River and The Last Cheater's Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest. Meloy spent most of her life in wild, remote places; at the time of her sudden death in November 2004 (three months after completing Eating Stone), she and her husband were living in southern Utah.