Satellite - by Simmons Buntin (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

How do we find a way to exist equitably in the world without exhausting our natural and cultural resources? Exploring how to create belonging, among both human and nonhuman animals, is our essential work. Parents have the added responsibility of conveying this charge to their children in a way that centers hope and empowerment over guilt and fear.

In Satellite, Simmons Buntin delves into the idea of belonging--in place, time, family, and community--in sixteen essays written over nearly two decades. The pieces range throughout the desert Southwest, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and as far afield as Mount Saint Helens, eastern Montana, northern Vermont, Sweden, and even the moon (if a telescope atop Kitt Peak counts). Buntin examines the beauty and challenges of raising a family and creating more sustainable communities in the Sonoran Desert--and, more broadly, in any of America's diverse cultural and ecological landscapes. How should community be defined? How do we protect heritage in an age of globalization? How do we find renewal following personal and place-based trauma? What forms may grace take, and how can parents pass that dignity on to their children?

Fortunately, it is a responsibility both shared and rewarding, funny and phenomenal, for at every turn there is a new discovery, a new insight, a new integration between ourselves and the world that culminates, when we succeed, in a vibrant sense of place. Buntin searches for a balance between the built and natural environments and the beings that inhabit them in a way that enables us not only to survive but to thrive together.

Review Quotes

"Unfailingly engaging and lyrical. A beautifully written love letter to the intertwining tendrils of nature and community, Satellite takes its rightful place among the finest work by outstanding Sonoran Desert writers including Gary Paul Nabhan, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Alberto Ríos."
-- Michael P. Branch, author of On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer

"A beautiful book grounded in family, community, and nature to take hope and inspiration from."
-- Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower

"A rich and warm and love-filled meditation . . . Generosity of spirit and constancy of attention imbue every one of the essays in this splendid, shining collection."
-- Elizabeth Dodd, author of Horizon's Lens: My Time on the Turning World

"From the direct sensual pleasures of photographing wildflowers and drinking beer to the more complex pleasures and pains of fatherhood, fraught with dangers from rattlesnakes to mood swings, this beautiful and deep collection of essays covers fascinating terrain. . . . A moving distillation of a lifetime of work and thought."
-- David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

"Unlike so many of his predecessors, Buntin is never torn between loving the wilderness and loving his family, between wanting to explore with his camera and wanting to explore with his young daughters. The love for one increases the love for the other in a sort of whirlwind of curiosity, generosity, and deep feeling. These are thoughtful, detail-rich essays that are deeply engaged with the natural world and with humans as part of the menagerie. They model in the best way what I have lately heard called tonic masculinity and manage to have a great deal of fun in the process."
-- Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

"Satellite links us lyrically to expanses of wildness, recollections of familial experience, . . . orbiting an ever revolving heartfelt artistry that takes the reader on a journey toward reverence, respect, and greater kinship with nature and humanity . . . An act of love."
-- J. Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

"Whether admiring the Great Orion Nebula with his daughter, chasing a rare 'explosion' of desert wildflowers along the U.S.-Mexico border, asserting craft beers as an expression of place, or meditating on individual and communal heritage, Buntin invites us to rediscover the extraordinary in the seemingly simple intimacies--with people and places, near and far. Wherever you call home, Satellite is a guide to belonging and cherishing 'the sheer abundance of it all.' "
-- John T. Price, author of All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations

"Even as naturalist and writer Simmons Buntin introduces his daughters to nature, he must come to terms with his place in the world . . . yielding to beauty, building wonder, and sketching out hope for our children. Here is a field guide to a father's love."
-- Janisse Ray, Craft and Current: A Manual for Magical Writing

"The best personal essays offer insights into the world as well as the writer. Simmons Buntin manages that fine balance in this collection, which ranges geographically across the American West, from his Tucson backyard to the slopes of Mount Saint Helens, and ranges autobiographically from memories of growing up as the son of a troubled mother to scenes of delight and anguish as the father of two young daughters. Readers will find him an illuminating guide as he searches for beauty and spiritual grounding in nature, a search reflected in the haunting photographs that accompany each essay."
-- Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

"I can't think of a better guide--to whiptails, desert super blooms, craft beer, constellations, photography, fatherhood, community, and, well, life--than Simmons Buntin. From Denver to Tucson, the Bosque del Apache, Mount Saint Helens, and beyond, Buntin writes with equal facility about the beautiful, dynamic intricacies of the natural world and the many lovely, knee-buckling complexities of family. These wide-ranging, self-aware, astute essays will leave you enlightened and deeply glad--glad right down to your heart and bones, the feathery roots of what some of us might even call a soul."
-- Joe Wilkins, author of The Entire Sky

About the Author

Simmons Buntin is the author of the poetry collections Riverfall and Bloom; the co-author, with Ken Pirie, of Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places; and the co-editor, with Elizabeth Dodd and Derek Sheffield, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He is the editor-in-chief of Terrain.org, the president and director of the board of Terrain Publishing, and the director of marketing and communications at the University of Arizona. He lives in Tucson.