Leaning on the Wind: Under the Spell of the Great Chinook

by Sid Marty

A finalist for the 1995 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language non-fiction

Winner of the Mountain Environment and Culture Award at the 1995 Banff Mountain Book Festival

Leaning on the Wind is a love song of the west, sung to the tune of the wild chinook wind. Sid Marty skilfully weaves together the prehistory of Alberta with the experiences of First Nations, miners, early homesteaders and his own family. At the centre of his tale is the Marty homestead, located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Sid looks back through generations of his family and celebrates the feats of wild creatures and wild westerners.

The past comes alive in these pages, but so does the present, where you will meet cowboy poets, bull riders, sailplane pilots, desperate chicken farmers, curmudgeonly broncos, a homicidal cow elk, some dubious politicians and several fierce defenders of the earth. Humour and sardonic wit abound, along with abundant affection for the western earth and the people who depend on its bounties and experience its extremes of wind, frost and drought.

A western classic, Leaning on the Wind is as evocative today as when it was first published in 1995.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Nature

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this book is over 25 years old, the themes it treats are still timely, if not timeless. The author does a laudable job of creating a sense of place with the chinook wind of the title providing thematic unity. The area depicted is not terribly far as the crow flies from my residence in eastern Washington state, and the crisis of conscience created by the collision between consumer capitalism and environmental values (aka, the land ethic) is common to Canada and the United States. Before launching into such controversies though, the self-described curmudgeonly author paints a vibrant portrait of what it takes to live in such a place as the Palliser's Triangle area of southwestern Alberta in the lee of the Rocky Mountains. He teaches the reader about the rhythms, the threats, the rewards, and the people of the region, and a bit about his own family history. The book concludes with a wonderful chapter on his sweat lodge experience with native peoples from both sides of the international border, having detailed in preceding chapters his own heartbreak and need for healing after futile struggles with the forces of international petro-dollars and large-scale industrial development. In this summer of fiery apocalypse throughout western North America, the book stands as a noble testament to a way of life that is waning and an attitude that one can only hope will persist indefinitely, comforted, however grimly, by the certainty that, no matter what happens in the ensuing innings, nature bats last.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second Sid Marty book. You get to know a lot more about his full story in this one and its easy to get attached to him. He puts his family's history in the context of larger western US/Canada history which is pretty interesting. But its full of fun and entertaining storylines as well.