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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 call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. 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.… (more)
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The tone of the book is of the same tenor as Berry’s Unsettling of America, written in an urgent cultural moment where Americans had information about place clarified through simple language in poetic books just as they felt the nature of those places, as they had known them, slipping away. Ehrlich does not defend Wyoming the way Berry defends Kentucky, however, which may be an advantage of moving to a loved homeland later in life. It may also be a result of geography: where Berry is loving and fiercely protective and feels Kentucky, with its Midwest vitality and southern locale and abundant flow of water, can provide, Ehrlich is prepared to tally up the contributions and lacks of Wyoming and tell you the numbers straight. A state with eight total inches of rainfall, a state where the number of grazing animals and the amount of pasture available is precariously balanced, a state where relations with those around you is a matter of survival rather than a matter of keeping in good stead with the neighbors, this is the picture Ehrlich paints.
It’s a book of essays which dips into Ehrlich’s personal life, but her writing makes that palatable. She tells the history of the state with the same tone she uses for explaining the rodeo, the Sun Dance, and the way she married her husband. She gives the same poetry to the changes of the seasons that she does to grieving a dead lover. It’s believable not despite the vividness of the language, like with some sickeningly verdant nonfiction authors, but because of it. The beauty she sees in her life is the same kind of thing you see when your dog’s eyes catch the sun or when the flowers finally come up out back of the house in the spring. You get a sense, constantly, that she’s not making this up.
“Now I can only think of mud as being sweet.” (128)
"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and
Ehrlich moved to Wyoming permanently after her boyfriend passed away and became a helper on a ranch. This book, in incredibly flowing language, describes the Wyoming landscape, the ranches and all that goes on in that entirely alien world.
While I found myself skipping through some of the more descriptive passages, I did enjoy this book and wondered how I missed all this about Wyoming on my travels through that state. Anyone who chooses ranching is obviously made of tougher stuff than I am, since some of the descriptions of the work, such as sheepherding, made my skin crawl. I'm really not an outdoors girl.
“Not unlike emotional transitions—the loss of a friend or the beginning of new work—the passage of seasons is often so belabored and quixotic as to deserve separate names so the year might be divided eight ways instead of four.” (p71)
After writing of the Sun Dance and how the community supports the dancers through separation, initiation, and return, the author makes this observation:
“Sunday. Two American flags were raised over the Lodge today—both had been owned by war veterans. The dance apron of a man near me had U.S. Navy insignias sewn into the corners. Here was a war hero, but he’d earned his medal far from home. Now the ritual of separation, initiation, and return performed in Vietnam, outside the context of community, changes into separation, benumbment, and exile.” (p114)
“Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” (p130)
There are twelve essays that comprise the book, each one dealing with a different aspect or adventure that she experienced. Sheep herding, attending rodeo, or Indigenous events all come to life under her pen. Personally my favorite essays were the ones that found her describing the scenery, nature and unexpected weather conditions. From the Wind River to the Big Horn Mountains, this is a special place and she captures the uniqueness of both the land and the people who live there with depth and humor.
Both meditative and descriptive, The Solace of Open Spaces explores a region of breathtaking mountains and colorful high plains. The author knows Wyoming and we, the readers, are invited to visit and soak up these open spaces for a short while.
The title is a bit misleading as Ehrlich talks mostly about people and meaningful connections she made. I especially liked how she dismantled the stereotypical romanticized image of a "Marlboro man" by describing real cowboys and women among them.
The language is beautiful. I underlined many memorable sentences and passages. There were a lot of descriptions I didn't care for much, esp. related to animal husbandry, taking care of sheep, cattle, and horses, but I didn't mind.