The Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts

Southwest Center Series

by Gary Paul Nabhan (Editor)

In this refreshing collection, one of our best writers on desert places, Gary Paul Nabhan, challenges traditional notions of the desert. Beautiful, reflective, and at times humorous, Nabhan's extended essay also called "The Nature of Desert Nature" reveals the complexity of what a desert is and can be. He passionately writes about what it is like to visit a desert and what living in a desert looks like when viewed through a new frame, turning age-old notions of the desert on their heads.

Nabhan invites a prism of voices—friends, colleagues, and advisors from his more than four decades of study of deserts—to bring their own perspectives. Scientists, artists, desert contemplatives, poets, and writers bring the desert into view and investigate why these places compel us to walk through their sands and beneath their cacti and acacia. We observe the spines and spears, stings and songs of the desert anew. Unexpected. Surprising. Enchanting. Like the desert itself, each essay offers renewed vocabulary and thoughtful perceptions.

The desert inspires wonder. Attending to history, culture, science, and spirit, The Nature of Desert Nature celebrates the bounty and the significance of desert places.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Environment, Nature

192 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2020

About the author

Gary Paul Nabhan is an internationally-celebrated nature writer, seed saver, conservation biologist and sustainable agriculture activist who has been called "the father of the local food movement" by Utne Reader, Mother Earth News, Carleton College and Unity College. Gary is also an orchard-keeper, wild forager and Ecumenical Franciscan brother in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona near the Mexican border. For his writing and collaborative conservation work, he has been honored with a MacArthur "genius" award, a Southwest Book Award, the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, the Vavilov Medal, and lifetime achievement awards from the Quivira Coalition and Society for Ethnobiology.

--from the author's website

Reviews

[Abby Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely group of essays, meditations, lyrics, poems, murals, contemplations of mainly the desert of the Southwest, but also deserts in general. How we can come to see desert brimming with life and meaning, not bereft of things. How even light itself is different--clearer and more sharply defined. Much to think about and also a great resource for finding other books to read about the desert.

[Melissa Rochelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays by desert ecologists, poets, scholars, artists, and more with both indigenous and desert-transplant points of view.The book is broken up unto sections including Native Ways of Envisioning Deserts, Growing Up Deserted, Desert Contemplatives, Desert as Atzlan and Divided Turf, Deserts Seen from Other Places, and Desert as Art/Ecology Nexus.

The opening essay by Gary Nabhan explores the history of arid landscapes discussing everything from birds, plants, and people of these purportedly "uninhabitable" spaces, including symbiotic relationships between senita cactus and a moth, and competition between nurse plant and nursed plant, all with Nabhan's unique humor throughout. There's an essay featuring "Desert Fathers" -- monks who escaped to the Egyptian desert -- and one highlighting desert-themed murals in Tucson and Ajo in the Sonoran Desert. There's essays by folks who spent their childhood exploring the Sonoran Desert and essays by those who have chosen the Sonoran Desert as their home base as adults. The desert is explored in countless ways and by a diversity of voices to explore the nature of desert nature.

Recommend this collection if you enjoyed The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide

[litost · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book’s theme is that deserts are multifaceted and can contain multiple perspectives simultaneously. In that vein, a large number of individuals were invited to contribute. Unfortunately, most of the essays are pedestrian reminiscences of their time in deserts. Even Nabhan’s seems perfunctionary, recounting early ecologists who could only see the desert from one dimension. There were two essays which did stand out for me: Paul Mirocha’s wonderful analysis of desert art murals; and Francisco Cantú’s touching descriptions of his time as a border guard and a map showing were migrants died in their attempts to cross the Sonoran.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live in the Sonoran desert and always enjoy reading opinions and experiences of others who also love the desert. The compilation of essays is varied and each one stands alone. I will travel to several of the desert areas described to have my own experience. I recommend this book to anyone who loves the desert or who would like to understand more as encouragement to experience the desert more fully.

[Jesus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much. I learned a lot about deserts living organisms and how each individual see it differently. I love reading the personal connections that each passage had. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the desert of learning more about it.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essays in this book start out strong but then kind of taper towards the end. It's interesting to read so many different voices on the subject of the desert but I think many of the essays could have been longer and gone a little bit deeper.