Wyoming Books

From back cover:

"How many times have you seen tracks ahead of you on a beach, muddy forest trail or across a blanket of snow, and wondered what creature made them? This handy, pocket-sized guide helps you name the track maker, with life-size drawings of the animal's or bird's characteristic footprints. Just check for size with the ruler (left), then hold the book beside the mystery imprint and fine the drawing that looks most like it, for a quick identification. Includes 40 to 50 different animals and many birds most common the Rocky Mountains, with information on size, sounds, habitat, diet and patterns of movement."

[Includes Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Rocky Mountain National Parks]

Very informative and enlightening book on the environmental decisionmaking, especially when it comes to endangered species programs.

Though this is only the second book I've read by Annie Proulx, I can tell that her style and voice will keep me coming back for more and more of her work. Proulx blends the utterly fantastic with the totally mundane so seamlessly that she can pass virtually anything off in her writing and you'll accept it as commonplace.

Her characters seem completely well rounded in this collection, even when the stories are brief, and she compels you to care about them, though many of them are not what I would describe as "likable."

Just as she describes the state, her stories seem to be about nothing particularly special, yet you find yourself drawn into them and fascinated by their potential. Proulx does not disappoint.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume II: A Collection of Short Stories

While celebrating a special occasion eating in a nice restaurant near Seattle, my 4-year-old was devastated when his celebration balloon drifted up to the high ceiling. I picked up the "Balloon Galloon" as his bedtime story that evening, not knowing it told of this creature which eats the balloons lost by children all over the world. No book could have fit the occasion better, and several days after that my grandson would mention the hero of the story and want reassured that there really isn't such a creature as the Balloon Galloon. It's a book children will enjoy and remember.

I live in southwest Montana, and I can say that this is really the best resource for those who want to explore the Beartooths. The amount of information provided for each hike is amazing - what an undertaking it must have been to put this together! The result is a very readable, most informative guide. There's a reason that there aren't a plethora of guides to the Beartooths on the market - it's been done right the first time.

I used this book when my friends and I hiked in the Grand Teton National Park. It was such a good guide to let us know where to find the trailheads and what to expect on the hikes. We all had a good time!

"Beyond the Far Ridge" by Edward Mark McGough. McGough is an educated, humble, underspoken cowboy, who knows how to tell a good story. In "Beyond the Far Ridge," he shares selected portions of the adventure of a lifetime that he and his wife lived out! McGough very gradually accepts you as a trusted friend and opens up more and more to you! Don't skip ahead and spoil the experience! Masterfully done!

Bonney's Guide to Grand Teton and Jackson Hole really covers the history and the points of interest in Jackson Hole. It is filled with incredible tidbits of information for those who really want the story behind the scenery.

This book has some great trails and the descriptions make them easy to follow. I also bought the other JH guide book and found some of the "trails" to be lame and the descriptions were bad - I got lost. I highly reccomend THE BOOK! It's fun to read too.

The trunk of this book is the unlikely marriage of two botanists, one in his 70s and the wife in her 30s. This raises the question of what binds people together. The answer is plants. Aven Nelson was one of the most distinguished botanists of the American West, doing major exploring at the end of the 19th century when the romantic Humboldtian natural history explorer tradition was still alive. But the relationship of Aven and Ruth is only the starting point for a book of ruminations on questions of larger bindings, most importantly what binds people to a place or to the Earth as a whole. The Nelsons were on the fringe of the academic world, but they had a much richer natural realm than the botanists headquartered in botanical capitals like Columbia University in New York City. Aven Nelson expressed his priorities as "the lives of men and women shall be fuller and richer because they have touched hands as it were wih a few of the lovable creations and creatures of the great uiverse." The author, Frieda Knobloch, a westerner herself, interweaves the Nelson's story with her own experiences and reflections on what binds her to the Nelsons and to the land. This book portrays science as very much an affair of the heart, of people obsessed with things they love, of imperfect people and institutions, but finally as something that has crucial things to teach the human race about living on Earth. The form of the book is very unusual, blending sections of letters, journals, biographical links, theory, and personal meditations. It's all great food for the imagination.