The wide open prose, poetry, and photographs of the prairie (University of Nebraska Press, 2008)
Includes bibliographical references
Part one: Home on the range - Becoming - Mary Clearman Blew -- - Evolution - Judy Blunt -- - Excerpts from - The death of Jim Loney - James Welch -- - No bastion - James Galvin -- - A foal - Thomas McGuane -- - Grandfather poem - Letter to Richard Hugo - Birthright - Crosscurrent - M.L. Smoker --- - To a meadowlark - Jim Harrison -- - Portfolio one - Lee Friedlander -- - Part two: Hunting and gathering - The bear in the road - Barry Lopez -- - Bird hunter - Rick Bass -- - Four excerpts from the novella - What the prairie has to say about fly fishing - David James Duncan -- - Excerpt from - The willow field - Far point - William Kittredge -- - A summer journal - Gretel Ehrlich -- - Portfolio two - Lois Conner -- - Part three: Travels across the plains - Don't fence me in - Jim Harrison -- - Excerpt from - Crossing the plains with Bruno - Annick Smith -- - Empire - Richard Ford -- - Portfolio three - Geoffrey James -- - Part four: Natural history - An entire heaven and an entire earth - Dan Flores -- - Excerpt from - Plains, prairies, and the shining mountains - Peter Matthiessen -- - Instructions from a misanthrope's paradise - Richard Manning -- - Driving Montana - Distances - High grass prairie - Bear paw - Richard Hugo -- - Source acknowledgments -- - Contributors
It is hard to love the high, cold plains of the American West. They are vast and harsh and demanding. And perhaps because they are so hard to love, prairies challenge the imaginative mind and the adventurous heart. The Wide Open reveals how some of the most interesting and accomplished writers and photographers in the country have met that challenge and given the genius of the prairie a vision and a voice. Their stories are as diverse as the tellers, ranging from fiction by Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, and William Kittredge, to the childhood histories of Mary Clearman Blew and Judy Blunt and the