The Solace of Open Spaces

Description: The Solace of Open Spaces Product Description Product Description A collection of transcendent, lyrical essays on life in the American West, the classic companion to Gretel Ehrlich’s new book, Unsolaced“Wyoming has found its Whitman.” —Annie Dillard Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves. Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning” ( Newsday), Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us. Review "Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still." Whether she's reflecting on nature's teachings, divulging her experiences as a cowpuncher, or painting vivid word portraits of the people she lives and works with, Gretel Ehrlich's observations are lyrical and funny, wise and authentic. After moving from the city to a vast new state, she writes of adjusting to cowboy life, boundless open spaces, and the almost incomprehensible harshness of a Wyoming winter: "When it's fifty below, the mercury bottoms out and jiggles there as if laughing at those of us still above ground. Once I caught myself on tiptoes, peering down into the thermometer as if there were an extension inside inscribed with higher and higher declarations of physical misery: ninety below to the power of ten and so on." After experiencing the isolated life of a sheep herder, she writes, "Keenly observed the world is transformed. The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient." Ehrlich's gift is one of subtle precision. She writes beauty into the plainest of thoughts and meaning into the simplest of ideas: "True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere." --Kathryn True Review Praise for Gretel Ehrlich and The Solace of Open Spaces: "Any one of [its 12 chapters] stands beautifully on its own . . . She brings the long vistas into focus with the poise of an Ansel Adams." —The New York Times Book Review "A stunning rumination on life on Wyoming's High Plains . . . Ehrlich's gorgeous prose is as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning." — Newsday "Ehrlich's best prose belongs in a league with Annie Dillard and even Thoreau. The Solace of Open Spaces releases the bracing air of the wilderness into the stuffy, heated confines of winter in civilization." —San Francisco Chronicle "Ehrlich [is] a gifted essayist and nature writer." —The Washington Post "Vivid, tough, and funny . . . an exuberant and powerful book." —Annie Dillard About the Author Gretel Ehrlich is the author of This Cold Heaven, The Future of Ice, Heart Mountain, Facing the Wave, and The Solace of Open Spaces, among other works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Ehrlich studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She lives in Wyoming. Features Penguin Books Shipping Shipping for this item is free in the 48 continental United States. We do not offer shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Territories, APO & FPO. After your order has been shipped, you will receive an e-mail with the name of the carrier and the tracking number. Returns We permit returns if you are not satisfied with your purchase. Your return request must be initiated within 30 days of the purchase date. To initiate a return, please contact us through the eBay Message Center. You will receive an RMA number to ensure proper handling of the return. We do not provide refunds for a return WITHOUT an RMA number. You will be refunded in full, minus the shipping and handling expenses incurred at time of purchase. Payment We accept payments through PayPal. You may use a major credit card via PayPal. For all “Buy It Now” items, immediate payment is required.

Price: 20.89 USD

Location: Denver, Colorado

End Time: 2024-02-26T04:18:07.000Z

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