A High Uintas Bookshelf

In this column we’ll list 2-4 interesting articles, books or the like that have caught our attention. They aren’t necessarily recent or recently read-- sort of a random compilation. Within a year, hopefully, we’ll have an established and detailed reading list. It won’t be complete without your additions. Please send suggestions and a descriptive sentence or two.

Wilderness Essays. John Muir. Peregrine Smith. l980.
Back in l980, Utah publishing house Peregrine Smith released a fine set of books, entitled Literature of the American Wilderness. Among them are Wilderness Essays by John Muir and The Natural History Essays by Henry David Thoreau. In this 40th year of wilderness celebration, a rereading of those classic texts could not be more poignant.

Listen to Muir: :To lovers of the wild, these mountains are not a hundred miles away. Their spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, as a circle of friends. ... Plain, sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel. You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature."

The impact these two writers have had on all who cherish wilderness is immeasurable and worth our deep gratitude. Visit them again. You wonít be disappointed.

Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets. E. C. Krupp. Oxford University Press. l991.
Try as we might, some of us cannot decipher the constellations beyond the primary six or seven we have known since childhood. In a fascinating history of peoples of the earth's following of the movement of the stars and stories of the heavens, the author, an internationally recognized astronomer, weaves ancient sky tales with astronomy and cultural connections.

"By watching the sky, keeping careful track of its rhythms and patterns, we understood relationship, scientifically and poetically. That understanding helped us feel at home in the universe. We still can't do without it."

This book by the Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles is a joy to read.