C. L. Rawlins

C.L. Rawlins previous book, Sky's Witness, was praised by Jim Harrison for the "spaciousness of its thought and the antic wit of its style." Broken Country takes us back to the source: Wyoming's remote Salt River Range, where the author's life changed for good in the summer of 1973. Thus--with a rift between himself and his family, his heritage, and a nation at war--Rawlins begins a journey to the American interior. He takes to the high country with a team of horses, three dogs, and a friend named Mitchell Black to watch over a herd of sheep. And there he encounters not only a rugged landscape but his own mythic legacy: the frontier West. "To be found," he writes, "you must be lost or lose yourself...And to be whole, you must know that you are, or can be, or will be, broken." Here is fresh air, ferocious mirth and a hint of silent terror as Rawlins tackles the questions we long to ask of ourselves and our tangled world. As our reach entends to the vastness of the land, it also deepens to touch the mysteries of the heart. In Broken Country we find both storm and shelter as the author guides us to the place of understanding.

Mountains And Memory

Broken Country

A Year in the Wind River Range

Sky's Witness

Thoreau joked that he was a "self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms," never dreaming that such a need might exist. But such is the author's work and that of his various helpers, from ski bums to shortstops. They travel the alpine wilderness at all seasons by touring skis , snowshoes, pack llamas, float-tubes, and a tiny but dependable rat. The remove mountain beauty, "where thoughts stretch for miles and days," would be enough, but C.L. Rawlins is after something more. He's a backcountry hydrologist, collecting rain, snow, and the water of high lakes to measure air pollution. Alongside Rawlins we discover the natural history of the central Rockies, the flowering of plants, and the ways of mountain animals. We learn how the Shoshoni lived in this harsh country before the arrival of settlers. We see also the effect of twentieth-century living on a wilderness that feels pristine but bears the chemical trace of distant smokestacks and freeways. With a style that roams between natural observation and personal essay, Rawlins's Sky's Witness gives access not only to the wilderness but to the ways in which we know ourselves.

C. L. Rawlins

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