Richard Shelton (1933–2022)

Mr. Shelton's lovely non-fiction book never travels in a straight line, and the reader isn't going to get back to Bisbee any time soon. He rambles, digresses, and describes, explains and reflects, and throws in his own personal philosphy for good measure. And he anthropomorphizes. Boy, does he anthropomorphize, and not just animals but also his old van, buildings, plants, about anything that crosses his path. Since I tend to do that myself, I don't have a problem with it. And he encounters ghosts. I don't have a problem with that, either.

The author's love and respect for the southern Arizona desert makes this book a gem. I learned a bit of history of the area, about a early fort where the Buffalo Soldiers were sent, the Apaches who made the area so unsafe for settlers and miners, the booms and busts of mining in the area, and the resilience of the people who lived in and around Bisbee. I learned a great deal about this desert, and the things, sentient and otherwise, that populate it. And all in a wonderful, lyrical prose. I learned about the author and his tolerant wife, but this was not so much a memoir as it was a journey. The author apparently did not have an ideal childhood, but he did not delve into that part of his life, only alluded to it.

The author has respect for all the natural creatures of the desert, and his writing about our horrid treatment of coyotes, past and present, is especially poignant:

“I do not understand how the person who truly loves a dog, loves it enough sometimes to risk his or her life for it, can exterminate coyotes, the dog's cousin, in hideous and sadistic ways.”

“We love and cherish our dogs because they respond with loyalty and affection, and because they obey us. But the coyote, so much like the dog in appearance and even behavior, has refused to accept us as masters, has spurned us, and we can never forgive it.”

His stories of some of the children he taught can break a heart of stone. Mr. Shelton seems to be an idealist and a dreamer but also very down to earth, and the combination made this book highly readable for those of us who don't mind taking the long way 'round.… (mehr)