Utah Books

This is a selection of many of the best known essays of Enos Mills, who's regarded as the spiritual (as well as practical) father of Rocky Mountain National Park. Mills is justly loved by people who know the park, and deserves a broader audience along with other early environmentalist writers like John Muir.

Enos Mills was very much a turn-of-the-century naturalist. His voice is without any sort of academic affectation; he reads like the patient, intelligent watcher that he is, but not at all like a pedantic teacher of great and ponderous truths. Some of these stories are essentially understated, self-deprecating adventure yarns. There are times when you feel sure the author's exaggerating for his story's sake. Heck, for that matter he'll refer to an animal as "Mr. Ground Squirrel." I smiled a lot while reading this -- in bemusement, sometimes, but never in derision.

All those somewhat dated tones and turns of phrase only add to the charm of this book and of Enos Mills' work in general. Off of his pen, "Mr. Ground Squirrel" is a statement of the greatest respect. You don't snicker, because his relationship with that animal has a completely convincing integrity to it. There's a sort of glow that comes over you, reading this kind of thing, that makes "Radiant Days" a very fitting title.

Don't let my sendup of his voice fool you, though. Enos Mills was an impassioned environmental advocate -- just one whose approach, at least in writing, lacks the sort of anger we often feel a century later in realizing what we've lost.

I recommend this book to anyone who finds the indigant tone of most environmentally concerned titles to be exhausting. Radiant Days would make a fantastic gift to a young adult with a vaguish interest in the out of doors, or to anyone visiting the Rockies. Get it for teenagers who loved Raiders of the Lost Ark, too; it makes a great adventure read, with substance and to spare.

In my research on southern Utah, Glen Canyon, and Navajo Mountain, I put off reading this book for as long as I could. I figured: it's written by a millionaire not a writer, it's written long after Rainbow Bridge had already been discovered, and the cover just looks kind of dumb.
But I'm glad I read it.
The book features good descriptions of Navajo Mountain, of early trading posts, of traders John and Louisa Wetherill, and of a time when undiscovered Anasazi ruins could be found around every canyon bend and horses were the best way to move around in the desert.
The book includes good historic photos, and is even funny at times: like when the wealthy author talks about what sort of collars he likes to wear on his shirts, or when he writes about packing a makeshift humidor for cigars. It's a must, I'd say, for fans of the Navajo Mountain area.

I wouldn't have liked this book as much if I didn't live in Kayenta. It is the author's description of Red Lake, Kayenta, and Tsegi among others that makes this book so interesting. My Doctor told me about it, I bought it and have been passing it around to other people in town. Sorry Amazon. Sometimes the story drags a bit but that is Zane Grey. Sometimes his treatement of the Navajo is a bit stereotyped. Come to the four corners, stay awhile. Hike among the canyons and mesas. Get to know the people. Than read the book. You'll get much more out of it. There's an isolated cliff dwelling out here (somewhere near Tsegi Canyon, no more hints) where Zane Grey carved his name into the sandstone. He writes a pretty good description of the area and its people.

This book does exactly what the title says...it Rearticulates Writing Assessment. The only reason I read this book was for a class.

As indicated, these essays were originally given as lectures. Forturnately they were saved and published. That in itself illustrates the various ways information can be produced and distributed. Being a communicator, I found what Davies had to say to be, what I would consider to be "informative to motivational."

In responding to inquiries about how to be a writer, Davies basically says writers are born. You either have the talent or your don't. He goes on to point out that art is elitist, not democratic, and in fact is older than the idea of democracy. The lesson one could infer from this is, discover your gift and cultivate it. Don't seek to be what you're not, build on your God given strengths.

I have both guidebooks available for Desolation Canyon, and I have run the river twice the past two years. I prefer this one to the Belknap waterproof guide. Belknap is in color and lists where the rapids are, but with Rampton's book you get a better description and rating of each rapid. You have marks on the map denoting where you can get out to scout. You have a more thorough list of side trips and hikes available, at least the mile marker at which they are located, although the details of the hikes ie. how long it takes and so forth are not good. It makes a good effort at listing all available camp sites, and even highlights a few of my favorites.

The map has more topographic details as well, and makes it easier to tell exactly where you are as you go downriver.

All in all, a better and more informational guide than its counterpart (which isn't available on Amazon for some reason), but like with all river guides, its limitations include the fact that no river is the same each time. It changes with river volume, season, and the natural erosion and rockshifting that goes on year to year. It's a no frills book in black and white but I highly recommend it to anyone who got lucky and won a permit to run this beautiful river.

Finally, a virtual bible of guidebooks for this infinate land of valleys and cliffs. Eric does a great job with this series. So much info for one book. Countless hours and hours went into these books. This series is one of a Kind!

During the period from the mid 1840s to 1869, emigration across the Great Plains from the Missouri to Oregon and California was undertaken by thousands of emigrants from all walks of life and for all kinds of reasons. The suffering they endured was indescribable.

In the early days, there was no fixed route and the emigrants were in the hands of guides who promised, for a fee of $10 per waggon, to guide them along the way. Many routes were used. Some were well-worn, others perfunctorily surveyed, and yet others were based on mere guesswork.

In 1845, one of the guides, by the name of Lansford Hastings, wrote a guide book entitled "The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California". This sold like wildfire back east, and inspired a wave of discontented Americans to sell up and head west, following the route he described in his book.

Calling Hastings a guide is however a misnomer. He'd travelled across the USA in an emigrant train in 1842, but to Oregon, not California. And while the route to California which he was selling was probably the shortest in distance, it took the emigrants across some of the roughest country they could possibly encounter, and then right across the barren Great Salt Desert. The emigrants who followed what became known as the Hastings Cut-off suffered disaster after disaster, and the trek across the desert ended up to be the ruin of many.

In his book, Kelly recounts the stories of some of the parties who crossed the Salt Desert, including that of the legendary Donner party, and the dreadful disasters that befell them. He includes a lengthy account of a drive across the desert that he undertook in 1929 following the still-visible trail of the emigrants. There are fascinating photographs that he took, and absorbing interviews with some of the ancient pioneers who had occupied the fertile parts of the land when the emigrant trail was still fresh and littered with the abandoned belongings of those who had come to grief.

It's clear from the book that he has a fascination with the fate of the Donner Party, and devotes a great deal of his time to their journey. Much of the account of his own journey across the desert is concerned with looking for artefacts connected with their plight as they abandon their belongings in the desperate struggle towards water. His delight is overwhelming when he finally identifies the remains of the Reed family's "Pioneer Palace Car", abandoned in the desert when the oxen escape.

But herein lies the rub. There is a great deal of contemporary evidence for the abandonment of the Reed's family waggon, but when the Reed diary was eventually published in 1947, it clearly states that Reed borrowed a team of oxen from another group of pioneers and went back a few days later to recover the wagon. In any case, there's no contemporary evidence to suggest that the Pioneer Palace Car was anything like as large as more modern sources suggest and as large as the remains that Kelly found.

Now of course it's all very well saying that a 1929 book won't normally contain any evidence that wasn't published until 1947. However, in the 1969 revision, Kelly quotes extensively from Reed's diary, including the passage where Reed returns to rescue his waggon, yet makes absolutely no revision to any of his conclusions.

Kelly is an excellent historian who has written a considerable number of books on pioneer life in the Utah area. He has made a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the conditions of that era and before his death, donated all his notes and photographs to the Utah State Historical Society. His crucial importance should not be overlooked. Yet it's his rather cavalier approach that casts a great deal of suspicion over the thoroughness of his work. It's as if he has already drawn his conclusions and is looking for facts to back them up rather than examining the facts first and then drawing the conclusions.

Factually, it's doubtful if there's much on this subject that is better-written than Kelly's account of life on the Great Salt Desert. On that score alone, there's every reason to buy this book. Just be very wary about jumping to the same conclusions that Kelly does, without having read any other material on the subject.

This lovely contest winner will speak to women as surely as poets have spoken to the author, Suzette Marie Bishop. And the poets do speak to her. Much of her work is inspired by the work of others. With an eye and pen for detail, readers looking for poetry with a delicate touch are certain to love Bishop's book.
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Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of two award-winning books, This is the Place and Harkening

This book on Kiskaddon is more than a nostalgic collection of cowboy poetry. It offers several short stories that help us learn what life was like in the early twentieth century. The stories show cowboys poking fun at each other in an era before there was television and computers to amuse people. As you read the stories and poems you begin to formalize a picture of whom these people are. The stories give us a wonderful snapshot of a period of American life through the eyes of an editor who has caught the period in the works of Kiskaddon and his illustrator Fields.