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11th out of 90 books
—
24 voters
Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River
by
Ellen Meloy
More than a century after John Wesley Powell launched his boat on the Green River, Ellen Meloy spent eight years of seasonal floats through Utah's Desolation Canyon with her husband, a federal river manager. She came to know the history and natural history of this place well enough to call it home, and has recorded her observations in a book that is as wide-ranging as the...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
March 1st 2003
by University of Arizona Press
(first published 1994)
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I really enjoyed this book, I found it at the library when I was looking for something else and I was so happy to find it again. I had thought it was by Terry Tempest Williams so I haven't been able to find it... It is the story of Ellen Meloy on the river for the whole summer. I read it when I was close to graduating from college and it comforted me that just because you are an adult doesn't mean you have to be boring. I love her descriptions of her experiences, and the natural history of the a...more
Sep 02, 2009
Erin
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
river folks - especially those planning to run Desolation Canyon
Great for river folks, especially women and those running Desolation Canyon on the Green, or any of the rivers nearby. Gives history, rapid info, flora, fauna, and general thoughts on the impact of dams on rivers. Currently borrowing from the library, but would buy if was about to run that section myself.
I read this book in SLC before I moved to southern Utah. I wanted to educate myself about the part of the country I'd dropped myself into -- so radically different from the east coast. It was the perfect book to do just that. What at first seemed like a most inhospitable landscape, the high southwest desert, I learned to see as a fossilized history of cultures and climate, where only the most tenacious plant and animal life survived. (Anne Zwinger was another wonderful writer of this region). I...more
Another great read while floating the long miles of Desolation Canyon. Meloy is an insightful essayist that infuses meaning into this ribbon of wilderness in the desert.
I didn't enjoy this one as much as her Anthropology of Turquoise but it was still an exquisitely written book full of wry humor and an amazing description of a river and all the life dependent upon it.
The lovely debut book from a funny and brilliant natural historian who left us too soon.
Takes me back to that unforgettable experience!
This book is amazing and beautiful.
May 02, 2013
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Ellen Meloy was an American nature writer. Among the awards she garnered are the Whiting Writer's Award (1997) and the John Burroughs Medal (2007); in 2003 she was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, for The Anthropology of Turquoise Meditations on Landscape, Art & Spirit.
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