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The Desert Year
Now back in print, Joseph Wood Krutch’s Burroughs Award–winning The Desert Year is as beautiful as it is philosophically profound. Although Krutch—often called the Cactus Walden—came to the desert relatively late in his life, his curiosity and delight in his surroundings abound throughout The Desert Year, whether he is marveling at the majesty of the endless dry sea, at flowers carpeting the desert floor, or at the unexpected appearance of an army of frogs after a heavy rain. Krutch’s trenchant observations about life prospering in the hostile environment of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert turn to weighty questions about humanity and the precariousness of our existence, putting lie to Western denials of mind in the “lower” forms of life: “Let us not say that this animal or even this plant has ‘become adapted’ to desert conditions. Let us say rather that they have all shown courage and ingenuity in making the best of the world as they found it. And let us remember that if to use such terms in connection with them is a fallacy then it can only be somewhat less a fallacy to use the same terms in connection with ourselves.” This edition contains 33 exacting drawings by noted illustrator Rudolf Freund. Closely tied to Krutch’s uncluttered text, the drawings tell a story of ineffable beauty.
278 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
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About the author
Joseph Wood Krutch
93 books9 followersWorks of American critic, naturalist, and writer Joseph Wood Krutch include
The Modern Temper
(1929) and
The Measure of Man
(1954).
He worked as a professor at Columbia University from 1937 to 1953. Moving to Arizona in 1952, he wrote books about natural issues of ecology, the southwestern desert environment, and the natural history of the Grand Canyon, winning renown as a naturalist and conservationist. Krutch is possibly best known for A Desert Year , which won the John Burroughs medal in 1954.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...
He worked as a professor at Columbia University from 1937 to 1953. Moving to Arizona in 1952, he wrote books about natural issues of ecology, the southwestern desert environment, and the natural history of the Grand Canyon, winning renown as a naturalist and conservationist. Krutch is possibly best known for A Desert Year , which won the John Burroughs medal in 1954.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_...
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 25, 2024
Perhaps it was only the platitude that man is small, and that life is precarious.
An academic from New England spends a year in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. His sabbatical is a poetic one. He orients himself to scarcity of the region, noting how the fauna and flora adapt to the arid conditions. He extrapolates. We are reminded that he wrote this in 1952, and we muse now from a biosphere in flames, how quaint.
Perhaps closer to 3 stars as this reader began to sigh after subsequent references to Milton and Wordworth. Such filigree appeared disruptive. There's a comparison offered between desert and jungle in terms of effusive opportunity and Krutch laments that humanity went with the jungle model. Poets and Naturalists prefer the other course.
The author at one point becomes fascinated that there are frogs in the region, become noisily evident after a rain shower. He discovers tadpoles in a puddle. He takes a few before they would succumb to the fate of their haven evaporating. He nurtures them and then releases all but one of the young toads. There's a clumsy earnestness to this. Krutch nods to Thoreau constantly and my own thoughts drifted to a summer course on Walden a lifetime ago. I was grateful
I grabbed this at a recent book sale, and I am not sure which one. Such is the delight of those bazaars, thinking that might be interesting and spending a dollar. My god, we are so fortunate.
An academic from New England spends a year in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. His sabbatical is a poetic one. He orients himself to scarcity of the region, noting how the fauna and flora adapt to the arid conditions. He extrapolates. We are reminded that he wrote this in 1952, and we muse now from a biosphere in flames, how quaint.
Perhaps closer to 3 stars as this reader began to sigh after subsequent references to Milton and Wordworth. Such filigree appeared disruptive. There's a comparison offered between desert and jungle in terms of effusive opportunity and Krutch laments that humanity went with the jungle model. Poets and Naturalists prefer the other course.
The author at one point becomes fascinated that there are frogs in the region, become noisily evident after a rain shower. He discovers tadpoles in a puddle. He takes a few before they would succumb to the fate of their haven evaporating. He nurtures them and then releases all but one of the young toads. There's a clumsy earnestness to this. Krutch nods to Thoreau constantly and my own thoughts drifted to a summer course on Walden a lifetime ago. I was grateful
I grabbed this at a recent book sale, and I am not sure which one. Such is the delight of those bazaars, thinking that might be interesting and spending a dollar. My god, we are so fortunate.
July 16, 2015
The book offers Thoreau-like reflections on the Sonoran Desert. The “Sun is a primary fact,” Krutch writes, and because of the heat and dryness, Indians, plants and animals have had to learn “the great art of how to-do-without.” Even so, life is rich and diverse because of the vast differences in elevation. Quoting Roger Tory Peterson, Krutch writes that “’There are places in the Southwest where we can go through five or six life zones in half a day…. To accomplish such a change of scene in the East, we should have to journey two thousand miles, from Florida to the Gaspe or Newfoundland.’” “The upper bajadas,” Krutch observes, “are the great stretches of country which form a border, miles wide, around the bases of the foothills…and the topsoil -- if you can call it that -- is composed exclusively of the detritus of the weathered mountains.” This creates the niche (3,000 feet or below), with just the right amount of water, for the saguaro, the cholla cactus, the prickly pear and the paloverde. Krutch calls the landscape with these plants the “’succulent desert.’" Out here, he adds, the sky is part of the view. “One does not look at the landscape, one passes through it.” And this, he contrasts with New York City where “nothing grows" in "in a world almost wholly man-made.”
In his chapter, “From the Mountaintop,” Krutch describes the special perspectives gained from mountaintops overlooking deserts – those of Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus. After Krutch, himself, “left” the heights of his own mountaintop in the Sonoran Desert, he saw two realities: The material world of science and necessity, and the Truth that lies beyond what these can provide, a Truth about “Will and Value,” not just “Determinism and Ethical Relativity.” He writes that “I find it a source of thrilling amazement to consider that the world of my experience is paralleled by another world of reality so far beyond the reach of my organs of perception.” He swears he had seen a purple sunset, but the scientists he talked to said it was “a very loose way of talking.” Krutch rebels: “My consciousness is creative. It has created purple. And why, if the color purple ‘really is,’ should not all other things of which I have direct experience be equally real?” I didn’t understand what Krutch was doing with this.
In his chapter, “From the Mountaintop,” Krutch describes the special perspectives gained from mountaintops overlooking deserts – those of Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus. After Krutch, himself, “left” the heights of his own mountaintop in the Sonoran Desert, he saw two realities: The material world of science and necessity, and the Truth that lies beyond what these can provide, a Truth about “Will and Value,” not just “Determinism and Ethical Relativity.” He writes that “I find it a source of thrilling amazement to consider that the world of my experience is paralleled by another world of reality so far beyond the reach of my organs of perception.” He swears he had seen a purple sunset, but the scientists he talked to said it was “a very loose way of talking.” Krutch rebels: “My consciousness is creative. It has created purple. And why, if the color purple ‘really is,’ should not all other things of which I have direct experience be equally real?” I didn’t understand what Krutch was doing with this.
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June 29, 2011This book cost me one dollar at the local Nature Center. The corner has been chewed--quite literally--by some child or beast; I know not what.
I have mixed feelings about Mr. Krutch. At times, he is very lucid and I want to shake his hand. In chapter one: "A 'tour' is like a cocktail party. One 'meets' everybody and knows no one. I doubt that what is ordinarily called 'travel' really does broaden the mind any more than a cocktail party cultivates the soul." So true. And other times, as when he is wondering if a toad or a bird is satisfied with his life, I want to slap him upside the head. Life is just life. Sometimes it's satisfying and sometimes it sucks. Every toad knows that.
Nature writing often suffers from this delicate balance: it is easy to be philosophical on the topics of Nature and Life and Death, and nature writers have some good things to say. But if they go on at book length there is usually a point when the reader becomes impatient with the ramblings of an elderly, bored academic. On the whole though, I was pleased to take the writer as he is, remembering that I am not a particularly interesting person, either.
I have mixed feelings about Mr. Krutch. At times, he is very lucid and I want to shake his hand. In chapter one: "A 'tour' is like a cocktail party. One 'meets' everybody and knows no one. I doubt that what is ordinarily called 'travel' really does broaden the mind any more than a cocktail party cultivates the soul." So true. And other times, as when he is wondering if a toad or a bird is satisfied with his life, I want to slap him upside the head. Life is just life. Sometimes it's satisfying and sometimes it sucks. Every toad knows that.
Nature writing often suffers from this delicate balance: it is easy to be philosophical on the topics of Nature and Life and Death, and nature writers have some good things to say. But if they go on at book length there is usually a point when the reader becomes impatient with the ramblings of an elderly, bored academic. On the whole though, I was pleased to take the writer as he is, remembering that I am not a particularly interesting person, either.
April 25, 2025
Joseph Wood Krutch's The Desert Year is a delightful book mostly about the Southern Arizona desert from the point of view of a visiting Easterner. I first read the book decades ago and remember liking it -- and I still like it today. It is particularly relevant now because Martine and I just returned from spending several days in the Tucson area, where Krutch spent a year at the University of Arizona.
Krutch's observations on the flora and fauna of the Sonora Desert (aka the Southern Arizona Desert) are always interesting. He talks about the birds, tortoises, bats, and cacti in such a way that one wants to re-read the book as soon as one has put it down.
By now, the book is 75 years old -- but it's still worth reading.
Krutch's observations on the flora and fauna of the Sonora Desert (aka the Southern Arizona Desert) are always interesting. He talks about the birds, tortoises, bats, and cacti in such a way that one wants to re-read the book as soon as one has put it down.
By now, the book is 75 years old -- but it's still worth reading.
April 21, 2012
Written over 50 years ago, this classic book of nature writing captures the near timelessness of the southern Arizona desert in a series of essays describing the author's fifteen-month sojourn there. While Krutch harks back to Thoreau, his perspective, turns of thought, and style of expression are similar to the reflective essays of E. B. White. They begin with observations of plant and animal life and evolve into ruminations on the nature of human life.
Krutch writes of birds, the night sky, bats, saguaro cactus, ocotillo, and desert flowers. Considering them, he rediscovers the truth in ideas he has so long held as true that they've become near platitudes. Where there is plentitude in some things, for instance, there is no need for it in others. Nature cares for the species but not individuals, while human values tend toward the opposite. While every rose has its thorn, the blooming cactus shows us that the reverse is also true. A visit to the vastness and forbidding desert monuments of Cathedral Valley in south central Utah reminds him of the precariousness of human life.
The desert leads Krutch to contemplation of its paradoxes, as well. For instance, the struggle for life here where conditions for survival are more restrictive actually create an uncrowded and more serene ecosystem by comparison with the tropics. The varieties of bird life are vastly greater here than in more temperate climates. A species of toads can live unseen and unheard for 363 days of the year, emerging after a rain fall to sing and reproduce, then disappear and survive somehow in the waterless months between. Finally, there's one question he's never able to answer: why bats fly clockwise from Carlsbad cave.
You can't really know a place, he believes, until you have seen it both as novel and as familiar. A landscape is no more than a picture postcard until you have spent time there and discover yourself in the midst of it. "The Desert Year" is a wonderful account of that process and a celebration of the joy that can be found in settling down for a while in a place that gradually comes to feel like home.
Krutch writes of birds, the night sky, bats, saguaro cactus, ocotillo, and desert flowers. Considering them, he rediscovers the truth in ideas he has so long held as true that they've become near platitudes. Where there is plentitude in some things, for instance, there is no need for it in others. Nature cares for the species but not individuals, while human values tend toward the opposite. While every rose has its thorn, the blooming cactus shows us that the reverse is also true. A visit to the vastness and forbidding desert monuments of Cathedral Valley in south central Utah reminds him of the precariousness of human life.
The desert leads Krutch to contemplation of its paradoxes, as well. For instance, the struggle for life here where conditions for survival are more restrictive actually create an uncrowded and more serene ecosystem by comparison with the tropics. The varieties of bird life are vastly greater here than in more temperate climates. A species of toads can live unseen and unheard for 363 days of the year, emerging after a rain fall to sing and reproduce, then disappear and survive somehow in the waterless months between. Finally, there's one question he's never able to answer: why bats fly clockwise from Carlsbad cave.
You can't really know a place, he believes, until you have seen it both as novel and as familiar. A landscape is no more than a picture postcard until you have spent time there and discover yourself in the midst of it. "The Desert Year" is a wonderful account of that process and a celebration of the joy that can be found in settling down for a while in a place that gradually comes to feel like home.
January 5, 2008
An elegantly written account of an inquisitive man's discovery of the Sonoran desert in the late 1940's and early 1950's, with commentary -- now poignant -- about how desert populations will not be able to grow beyond their water resources.
March 2, 2018
"In nature, one never really sees a thing for the first time until one has seen it for the fiftieth." (4)
"Its appeal is not the appeal of things universally attractive, like smiling fileds, bubbling springs, and murmuring brooks. To some it seems merely stricken, and even those of us who love it recognize that its beauty is no easy one. It suggests patience and struggle and endurance. It is courageous and happy, not easy or luxurious. In the brightest colors of its sandstone canyons, even in the brightest colors of its brief spring flowers, there is something austere." (9)
"There is not continuous carpet of grass or herbage, no crowding together of exuberantly growing plant life. One does not push one's way through undergrowth; one stroll almost as in a garden. ... Because of a spacing which nature has attended to, it has a curious air of being a park rather than a wilderness." (23)
"The pleasures of ignorance -- at leased when accompanied by curiosity -- rival those of knowledge" (78-9)
"Every New England autumn is a kind of momento mori which grows more threatening at every recurrence." (163)
"Art knows no triumph greater than that which consists in making a platitude valid again." (252-3)
"Its appeal is not the appeal of things universally attractive, like smiling fileds, bubbling springs, and murmuring brooks. To some it seems merely stricken, and even those of us who love it recognize that its beauty is no easy one. It suggests patience and struggle and endurance. It is courageous and happy, not easy or luxurious. In the brightest colors of its sandstone canyons, even in the brightest colors of its brief spring flowers, there is something austere." (9)
"There is not continuous carpet of grass or herbage, no crowding together of exuberantly growing plant life. One does not push one's way through undergrowth; one stroll almost as in a garden. ... Because of a spacing which nature has attended to, it has a curious air of being a park rather than a wilderness." (23)
"The pleasures of ignorance -- at leased when accompanied by curiosity -- rival those of knowledge" (78-9)
"Every New England autumn is a kind of momento mori which grows more threatening at every recurrence." (163)
"Art knows no triumph greater than that which consists in making a platitude valid again." (252-3)
May 23, 2024
“As I climbed out of the vast emptiness up toward the heights where even snow and aspens seemed, by comparison, cozy and intimate, I tried to formulate in my own mind what it was that I had been most aware of as I stood in the shadow of one great block of sculpted stone to look across the clear air at another and another and another, towering in the distance. Perhaps what the landscape insisted upon was something which is only a little less obvious elsewhere. Perhaps it was only the platitude that man is small and that life is precarious.”
November 14, 2023
A memoir of sorts, philosophizing and enjoyment of the natural splendor seen in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Some of his observations are absolutely timeless. As I prepare for my own trip to Arizona, I was encouraged by his advice to observe and witness nature in the desert, which he believed to be a bit of a misnomer. Some of his asides were overly erudite or dated. But his reference material was all-star.
September 21, 2023
Krutch writes both scientifically and romantically about the desert. He spent a year in the desert in order to get to know it through the changing seasons, which is always a privilege to do in a natural environment. At first the desert seem void of life, but then you begin to see thriving life where you didn't at first. Highly recommended for desert lovers, such as myself.
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February 26, 2025A thoughtfully written collection of stories of the author getting to know the desert southwest.
All told in a very artful and poetic style while diving deeply into many aspects of the desert ecology, outlook and wisdom.
All told in a very artful and poetic style while diving deeply into many aspects of the desert ecology, outlook and wisdom.
March 10, 2020
A wonderful, meditative read on the big and small in the lower Sonoran desert. Truly a delightful book.
May 18, 2022
A completely delightful read about the natural world and the human yearning for peace. This is everything I hoped for in Thoreau, found deep within the American southwest.
January 1, 2024
Beautiful, thoughtful depictions of life in the desert. Evokes beautiful imagery of the desert and reading it made me want to go back to the Southwest
May 25, 2024
Pretty boring. Reads like a textbook with religious metaphors thrown in.
May 25, 2025
Beautiful descriptions of the Sonoran desert. Thought provoking.
October 25, 2016
Probably closer to 3 1/2 stars. Similar in tone to Aldo Leopold and similar in location to Edward Abbey, and placed chronologically between the two. A bit less than both, but still worth a read. The biggest fault is the tendency to fall into mid-century wordiness that makes reading some sections a slog.
April 11, 2013
Lovely if a bit self indulgent essays reminiscent of Thoreau if Walden had been the lower Sonoran desert. It's interesting to read an account of someone who encountered the desert after living in the east, since I've essentially done the opposite.
December 4, 2008
Summer in the desert is like a winter blizzard, I remember that thought.
October 30, 2010
I read this when I lived at Grand Canyon National Park. Although this book covers the Sonoran Desert, which is to the south and west of the Park), it fed my insatiable hunger for desert literature.
February 26, 2015
A very pleasant way to spend a day reading. Book was so much more than a book on the desert. More a book on life. will read again some day.
to-buy
May 22, 2015Referred to in Empire Antarctica: ice silence and emperor penguins
April 11, 2018
Great book for those familiar with the desert and those who are not.
August 29, 2017
I miss the desert!
January 10, 2025
DNF at (honestly I don't even think I finished a single chapter) on 2024.11.28
Boring af. Tried to start a few different essays but couldn't finish any. Maybe cuz it's written in the 50's?
Boring af. Tried to start a few different essays but couldn't finish any. Maybe cuz it's written in the 50's?
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews