Seasons: Desert Sketches

Unlabored wit couples with nimble insight in these posthumously published essays on the American West, transcribed from a series of radio addresses broadcast in the 1990s. In more than two dozen vignette-styled musings, nature writer Meloy (Eating Stone), who died in 2004, addresses conservation, animal rights, politics, and ecology. She praises the creative and philosophical wealth offered by living in the desert, a place where “comfort is found in your own insignificance.” She also muses about the differing perspectives of the desert’s other inhabitants, as when she finds a bat roosting in her house and stands on her head to share its view, reflecting: “when you’re a guest, you adjust.” Meloy winces at the 70-mile drive she must make just to buy necessities, but reminds herself that at least in her small Utah town she can get away with wearing her “pajamas to the post office.” In her travels, elsewhere in the U.S. and in Australia, she digs deep so as to “earn” the understanding of unfamiliar places, in order to better interpret her own native environment. This cinematically vivid collection feeds both intellect and soul, and shows that Meloy possessed the brevity and vision of a poet, and the coy sass of an understated comedian. (Apr.)