Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River

by Ellen Meloy

The author chronicles a season on the Green River in Utah's red-rock canyon country, describing her impressions of the region from a series of rafting trips

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Natural History, Travel, Adventure, Outdoors, Geology

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Ellen Meloy was an American nature writer. Among the awards she garnered are the Whiting Writer's Award (1997) and the John Burroughs Medal (2007); in 2003 she was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, for The Anthropology of Turquoise Meditations on Landscape, Art & Spirit.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in SLC before I moved to southern Utah. I wanted to educate myself about the part of the country I'd dropped myself into -- so radically different from the east coast. It was the perfect book to do just that. What at first seemed like a most inhospitable landscape, the high southwest desert, I learned to see as a fossilized history of cultures and climate, where only the most tenacious plant and animal life survived. (Anne Zwinger was another wonderful writer of this region). I was thrilled to learn that Ellen lived in the town I eventually moved to. Her contributions to the genre of environmental literature are invaluable. Her passing was a real loss.

[Lila Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book about a place I've been fascinated with since serendipty found me a camping spot at the rafters' take out point along the Green River near the town of the same name on a trip through Utah in the late 90s. The river poured out of Desolation Canyon (lower reach called Gray Canyon) and it sounded like a wonderful place to explore.... and here it is! Ellen Meloy has a great voice and I was sad to hear she died in 2004. I am now reading her "Anthropology of Turquoise."

[Kirk Astroth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book by Ellen Meloy. This one is mostly about the Green River as it carves through Desolation Canyon. Throughout the book her humor and lyrical writing shine through once again. Her section on Mormon missionaries who visit her house trying to convert her is classic. "Jehovah's Witnesses, the First Assembly of Aluminum Siding Vendors, and the Sisters of Avon, and other denominations catch the scent of newcomers. Somehow the Mormon missionaries easily detect fresh Gentiles, or non-Mormons." The chapter called "Postcards" is superb. And she and her husband, a BLM employee who runs the river, visit Las Vegas to see where all that water is going--with similar cynicism, humor and wry observations. Her chapter about Ken Sleight, model for Seldom Seen Smith in Edward Abbey's book is really heart warming and touching. The overriding question she ponders throughout is why there are no ravens in Desolation Canyon. In the end, they show up--just as she and her husband are departing for Montana.

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finish this book only wanting more and filled with a sadness that Ellen Meloy is no longer with us. Such a voice! And as one who has been down the Green through Desolation; she took me back with every sense; the best thing sans raft. I could remember it all. If there are ravens there now, then she is certainly with them; 'quorking' in her poetic, humorous and passionate way! This book definitely needs to be read before a float trip through Desolation. You will immediately realize that there is nothing Desolate about that canyon; one only needs to slow down, float carefully and slowly and open ones' senses to all of its history, majesty and hardship.

[Darby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, I found it at the library when I was looking for something else and I was so happy to find it again. I had thought it was by Terry Tempest Williams so I haven't been able to find it... It is the story of Ellen Meloy on the river for the whole summer. I read it when I was close to graduating from college and it comforted me that just because you are an adult doesn't mean you have to be boring. I love her descriptions of her experiences, and the natural history of the area.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for river folks, especially women and those running Desolation Canyon on the Green, or any of the rivers nearby. Gives history, rapid info, flora, fauna, and general thoughts on the impact of dams on rivers. Currently borrowing from the library, but would buy if was about to run that section myself.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the last chapter, Meloy describes herself taking a farewell float, gazing up at the river and two damselflies on her toes. Finishing her book feels like that, taking a long regretful look back at a place I don't want to leave. Meloy recreates her loved landscape with poetically precise language and deep erudition.

[Candice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing and beautiful.

[Mathew Gross · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lovely debut book from a funny and brilliant natural historian who left us too soon.

[Carrie A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Floating down the Green River, multiple times, and sharing her thoughts and adventures. Think it is time to take another river run.

[Krenner1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

After hearing a reference to this book, now out of print, I went to great lengths to find it and it was worth every minute. Meloy is a nonfiction environmental writer and here she journals a summer when she and her husband, a park ranger, paddle the Green River in Utah's Desolation Sound, recording viewings of wildlife, the health and preservation of petroglyphs and just recording the beauty and moods of the canyons. It is a bit geology, history, poetry, memoir, humor--often sarcastic, and angst about the building and bitter result of dams...pulled together so beautifully I was bookmarking every page. Yes, this book did deserve its win of the 1995 Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award, and others. I am happy to know of this author, who sadly passed way too young, but several of her books are still available.

"River rhythms drowned me a week ago, hardly a day into this trip. By now I am engulfed, so beyond the normal experience of domesticity, rescue is futile. It has become second nature to stuff our bedrooms into bags each morning and push into the current, to fall over backward in the boat, bodies limp with the heavy scent of cliffrose and rapids, to grunt up a rugged side canyon, shins lacerated by thorn and scrub, merely to see the petroglyph of a man with a wolf's head staring across the air at us. It is routine to drop from some high, remote rim observed time after time from the river then finally visited after years of seduction, to stumble back to camp, pluck rattlesnakes from our ankles, and stand at a cookstove, stirring a simmering pot, toes buried amidst the creamy blossoms of a thousand birdcage primroses."

"Compared to trout or salmon the humpback chub is a weak swimmer. In whitewater, however, it soars like an eagle, using its hump as a hydrofoil in the river's roiling, incessant Jacuzzi. This anatomical feature helps the fish hold its position near the river bottom, where currents are less bruising, without expending much energy. I slipped my hand into the bucket and gently cradled what amounts to a muscle with a tail. The shape of the fish is the shape of the river. Against my palm lay the fish that loves the wilds of the river: Desolation Canyon whitewater made solid."

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For several years, Ellen Meloy accompanied her husband, a River Ranger, on raft trips down the Green River through Desolation Canyon. She writes that she lived the rest of the year waiting for the summertime on the river. Her writing is beautifully descriptive of the Green River as she travels a wild stretch of the river between the Flaming Gorge dam upstream and the Glen Canyon dam downstream which captures the Colorado River. She recounts how people have tried to make a living from the river, but rainfall and runoff are too unreliable for crops. Only commercial raft trips and (long ago) the indigenous people who fished and camped along its banks could harvest the bounty of the river. The river is a green ribbon of trees, pools and rapids in a deep canyon surrounded by very hot and dry desert. This book was written about thirty years ago and years of drought have only worsened. Meloy herself died many years ago at a very young age, but she left behind a lovely story of the river she loved.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Meloy is like sitting down with your smartest, funniest friend and chatting the night away over good wine and snacks. She writes with a sensitivity to the environment and the people who are “of it” like few other writers. Her impatience with the nonsensical aspects of the majority of humans, which is killing all things, is uncomfortable at times, but incredibly necessary. I laughed, I rejoiced, I shuddered and I contemplated the demise of earth as we know it. This book has it all and I highly recommend for everyone who has a love of Place and a fear for what is happening to it.

[Sarah Rogers · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was a bit too all-over-the-place for me, and couldn’t hold my attention for very long before it felt like a slog. Some essays were beautiful and poetic, some were difficult to get through. The elements of humor made me laugh out loud a few times. I had read Terry Tempest Williams’ “Red: Passion & Patience in the Desert” a while ago, and I think I’d have given this one a better review if I hadn’t been comparing it to “Red,” one of my all-time favorites.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting an old friend, the Green River through Desolation Canyon, while reading the wonderful nature writing of Meloy, too soon gone from this world. Interspersed with the observations are essays on human use of water resources through dams and how that affected the plant and animal life. I very much enjoyed the natural flow of the observations along her river trips with her husband during the summer described in the book. It was like being there again in all my senses.

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps not the best of Meloy's books because it is a bit less lyric and more "grounded" in practical detail than some of her other work, "Raven's Exile" still soars. In the book, Meloy recounts a season of repeated river runs through Desolation Canyon along the Green River in eastern Utah with her ranger husband, Mark.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes when she would describe herself, her feelings about nature and the world, I almost thought she was describing me.

The other thing that kept coming to mind was that James Wright poem, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” Look it up and you’ll see what I mean.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard it said she is like a female Ed Abbey and I can see it, feel it. She made me want to pack my car and head to the Green River, where part of my soul still is. It was published in 1994 and still rings true today as if it were just written.

[Kori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, an enchanting description of a magical place teetering on the edge due to the interference of modern men. Having just returned from a trip there, I am quite relieved to say that it still survives, 30 years after the book was written.

[Elijah]

Upon finishing this book, I am deeply sad. Ellen Meloy is my favorite writer. She died in 2004, suddenly, of an aneurysm while she slept at only 58 years of age. Upon finishing this, I've read all her published work. There is no more for me to read for the first time.

[Patrick Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. As wild places vanish, Meloy’s books become more of a treasure. Loved this book.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an absolutely beautifully written book - what a loss to our collective humanity it is, losing Meloy and her gift for writing.

[Robert Huselid · Rating 5 out of 5]

She writes how I feel and wish I could write.

[Regine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Passionate immersion that can rise to the ecstatic. Intensely detailed, peppered with the acerbic. I could almost taste the river.

[Kyri Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A meditation on the Green River, water in the West, and wilderness.

I first read Meloy's EATING STONE, a book about desert bighorns. In comparison to that book, where the specificity of the theme reined in the author's imagination somewhat, RAVEN'S EXILE ranges widely. I think it should be read as a meditation/rant rather than as a factual account or even a memoir. At times the language is poetic; at other times I found it imprecise and over-the-top. Sometimes Meloy's outrage at American culture's lack of concern for wilderness, the hubris of building huge cities in the middle of the desert, and the arrogance of wanting to replace native fish with others that give better "sport" is acutely expressed and trenchant; sometimes the text degenerates into idiosyncracy and misanthropy.

Recommended, but I tend to think Craig Childs' book on water in the desert addresses the topic better.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is beautifully and passionately written, and Meloy certainly knows her stuff. But what makes Raven's Exile especially enjoyable is that Meloy avoids a common pitfall of many naturalist writers--taking their subject, and the writing itself, too seriously--by injecting her signature humor and odd flights of imagination into the narrative.

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one as much as her Anthropology of Turquoise but it was still an exquisitely written book full of wry humor and an amazing description of a river and all the life dependent upon it.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes me back to that unforgettable experience!

[Crissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

HC 1994