Earthtones: A Nevada Album

by Ann Ronald, Stephen Trimble (photographs)

Too many visitors to the Silver State never see Ann Ronald and Stephen Trimble's teal sky and a sea of purple sage, mountain mahogany and a crimson mass of claret cup cactus, a dust-blown sunset of vermilion, orange, and gold. More colorful than a neon display on Las Vegas Boulevard, Nevada is one vast landscape of tint and shadow and aesthetic dimension.
In Earthtones, Ronald and Trimble provide a guide to understanding a challenging landscape. Their love for the land shines through in six vivid personal essays and sixty-seven boldly emotional color photographs.
In independent but interwoven visions, Ronald and Trimble cherish the same Nevada, an astonishing place to anyone familiar with the mistaken stereotypes Nevada suffers. After sharing the surprises of this collaboration, readers too will cherish a Nevada filled with earthtone treasures.

136 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Stephen Trimble has received significant awards for his photography, his non-fiction, and his fiction, and the breadth of those awards mirrors the wide embrace of his work: The Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation; The National Cowboy Museums Western Heritage Wrangler Award; and a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater, Colorado College, honoring his efforts to increase our understanding of Western landscapes and peoples and his choice to remain a stubborn generalist. Environmental historian James Aton has said: Trimble's books comprise one of the most well-rounded, sustained, and profound visions of people and landscape that we have ever seen in the American West.

As writer, editor, and photographer Trimble has published twenty-two books."

Reviews

[Carla Boner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic pictures by Stephen Trimble. Ann's essays are beautiful prose that takes you along side her as she travels the back roads of Nevada in her truck, hikes up and across mountains, eats lunch in the Black Rock playa and saves a couple fellows who were ill prepared for the harshness of the playa. She sits and journals while watching squirrels, badgers, and other animals go about their business. She comes nearly nose-to-nose with a mountain goat. Her adventures cover cities, towns, ghost towns, and several middle of nowhere spots within the Great Basin. At times I was on the edge of my seat wondering what she would do next because I've been to that place or in that weather condition and I was afraid for her. My favorite one, although I still view as a gamble is, as she was driving down a dirt road a forecasted rain episode came and turned the dry dirt road into a claylike mess that is difficult to drive on. She pulled off to the side of the road and waited for the storm to go away. She camped there one or two nights. Not far away 22 inches of snow was dropped from the same storm. But if you've spent anytime in Nevada if you just wait, the sun will come out again and the road will either dry or freeze, either way making it traversable again. I would like to be more courageous like Ann and go see all of the locations she talks about. Many I have seen and been to, many I have not.
All in all, wel worth the read if you love or are curious about the Great Basin and Nevada.

[pjr8888 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"home means nevada,
home means the hills
home means the sage and the pine..."

homines sicut montes!