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"Longtime residents of the sonoran desert, the Tohono O'odham people have spent centuries living off the land - a land that most modern citizens of southern Arizona consider totally inhospitable. Ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan has lived with the Tohono O'odham, long known as the Papagos, observing the delicate balance between these people and their environment. Bringing O'odham voices to the page at every turn, he writes elegantly of how they husband scant water supplies, grow crops, and utilize wild edible foods. Woven through his account are coyote tales, O'odham children's impressions of the desert, and observations on the political problems that come with living on both sides of an international border. Whether visiting a sacred cave in the Baboquivari Mountains or attending a saguaro wine-drinking ceremony. Nabhan conveys the everyday life and extraordinary perseverance of these desert people in a book that has become a contemporary classic of environmental literature."--Jacket.… (more)
User reviews
This book made me wildly nostalgic for Tucson and made me wish I'd spent more time hiking/in the mountains
Despite having friends in Tucson who spent a lot of time with the O'Odham, I knew very little about them as a people prior to this book. I especially enjoyed the chapter on cactus wine, because, as Nabhan points out -- an outsider's understanding of the annual saguaro fruit harvesting is highly romanticized. Nabhan's representation is both grittier and more beautiful.
I thoroughly enjoyed this.