By eschewing such "distractions" as jobs, money and children, Petersen (Among the Elk
; The Nearby Faraway
; etc.) and his wife embraced a simple life on the edge of the wilderness in the Colorado Rockies, where the enduring rhythms of nature shape each day. In this extended meditation on that life, Petersen's prose can be overwrought ("Still hoping for a glimpse of the hawk,... I... lifted my face skyward in desperate faith, like some crippled, crawling pilgrim") and cranky ("What was once a middle-class paradise... has been reduced to just another rich person's playground of choppity-chop subdivisions and fenced-in ranchettes littered with a nauseating profundity of tacky trailer houses at one extreme, ostentatious and obscenely wasteful trophy homes at the other"). But he also writes movingly of the things he loves: his wife and dogs, the mountains, the grizzlies he camps among every summer and the elk he hunts for food ("the humane killing of a fairly and honorably outwitted prey is precisely the opposite of slaughter.... Does the wolf not love the caribou? And does she not, even so, undertake her daily hunts with enthusiasm and joy?"). While this book will not bump classics like Walden
, A Sand County Almanac
or Silent Spring
off the environmental bookshelf, its mix of strong opinions and vibrant personality give it unique appeal. Agent, Carl Brandt
. (Apr.)
