The River in Winter: New and Selected Essays

by Stanley Crawford

This book is like Stanley Crawford's floor. The floor began more than thirty years ago when Crawford moved his family to New Mexico after selling movie rights to his first novel. The history of their home-made house is written in the hand-plastered floor, patched and sealed over the years. At first a reminder of how little he and his wife knew about working with mud, the floor has become beautiful in the years since 1971. It embodies their lives, the ways things have changed and the ways things have stayed the same. "A mud floor is perfectly sustainable, being infinitely repairable and finally recyclable." "Reflections in Mud," Crawford's essay about the floor, is one of the many pieces collected in this book about his life in northern New Mexico. The novelist who didn't know how to lay a mud floor is now a seasoned farmer, irrigator, and northern New Mexico villager, and the essays on these subjects that he has been writing since the 1980s continue the work he began in Mayordomo and A Garlic Testament as an articulator of values that are out of synch and out of scale with the suburban lives of most Americans in the twenty-first century. Whether he is writing about the river whose water irrigates his land, the plants and animals with which he lives, or the continuing struggle he and his neighbors must engage in if their small farms and farmers markets are to survive, Crawford's thoughtful, witty essays are the kinds of summing up that his fans have been cutting out of periodicals for years. Now that they are in book form we can all throw away the clippings, reread the essays, and give the book to friends who have yet to discover the pleasure of reading Stanley Crawford.

Genres: Nonfiction

180 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2003

About the author

Crawford is the author of "Gascoyne," "Petroleum Man," "Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine," "A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm," "Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico," "The River in Winter," and "Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to my Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of their Childhood." He lives in new Mexico with his wife, RoseMary, where they own and run a garlic farm.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Thoreau of the high semi-arid country, Crawford writes lyrically about his low-impact way of life as a New Mexico truck farmer of gourds, statice, garlic—anything that can be watered by the traditional, communal irrigation ditch known as an acequia. He writes persuasively (if a bit redundantly, as these are essays collected from various sources) that the smallholder-run acequia way of life should be protected against the inroads of corporate farming, and most importantly that water rights should not be separated from the land. Unfortunately, the crazy-quilt network of small farms that depend on the ditches is probably doomed, as it just isn't amenable to statewide management and regulation.

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stanley Crawford gave us a signed copy of this book while we stayed at his garlic farm.
I loved the variety of topics in these essays: "gourd people," village life, a farmer's appreciation for good boxes, the Embudo River that you can hear from the farm, Crawford's tireless efforts to participate in local government and engage with state government. My favorite essay was the one where he's at a dinner highlighting local foods and also trying to persuade some local journalists to cover the issue of acequias. The back-and-forth between the eating experience and dialogue was so skillfully done.

[Heidi Nobantu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful way to get to know parts and aspects of Northern New Mexico through the Colonial Spanish influence on the land ~

[C.L. Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Purchased November 2012, reading March 2013. Interesting view of Northern New Mexico area and life. Political stuff boring. Overall pretty good read. Finished April 2013.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm a big fan of collections of essays where I can choose a snack or a full meal of reading. I've re-read and will again.

[Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like watching a frozen try to flow.