"There is nothing out there."
Such is the claim, at least, of politicians and oil company executives,
amazed that anyone would fight to protect the miles of plateaus and
canyon bottoms that stretch across southern Utah. Even tourists see
this region as an empty spot on the map—an excuse to drive
directly from Capitol Reef to Arches National Park. But it is precisely
this—nothing—that writer Brooke Williams and
photographer Chris Noble find captivating about Escalante.
In this thoughtful and exquisitely illustrated rumination, the authors
tour the network of chasms and gorges that began forming millions of
years ago on the Colorado Plateau and today constitute a desert
paradise of mesas, buttes, and boundless solitude. At the center of
this landscape is the region known as Escalante, 1.7 million mostly
roadless acres, where silence, darkness, and emptiness have no
intrusions.
With refreshing originality and a haunting rhythm to his prose,
Williams reflects on the notion of space and seclusion both internally
and externally. Williams also celebrates the landscape: its geology,
flora and fauna, its people from the ancient Fremont to its Mormon
pioneers, hiking aficionados and recluses such as Everett Ruess, and
the controversial politics involved with the creation of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Chris Noble’s
photographs break down the distinction often felt even in very fine
photos, that between the observer and the place. These images pull the
reader into the landscape, seamlessly merging the experience and the
setting. Part narrative, part poetry, and part meditation, this book
charts the quiet places where the human spirit delights in solitude. It
reminds us of our intimate connection with the wild and of the
landscape’s powerful pulse especially when there is nothing
to be found.
|
Escalante
The Best
Kind of Nothing
by Brooke Williams
with photographs by Chris Noble
University
of Arizona Press, 2006
Order
a copy |
