BLUE MOUNTAINS FAR AWAY: JOURNEYS INTO THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS, By Gregory McNamee, The Lyons Press, 2000, 163 pages, $22.95.
"Blue Mountains" isn't your usual outdoor book. It's a collection of 13 essays that examine the wilds of the American Southwest from a philosophical or sometimes metaphysical point of view.
McNamee, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., has written more than a dozen other books, and his style is both poetic and profound.
This book won't tell you how to get to various mountains or points of interest, but it will heighten your senses and stir some soul-searching the next time you enter the wilderness.
McNamee devotes one provoking essay on the magic of lightning, another to wind and another to the Southwest's "blue"-colored mountains.
The most unusual chapter in the book has to be the first, "Growing up Nuclear," where nuclear missiles, testing and downwinders are examined. While the cleverly written essay seems alien to the others in the book, it somehow ties in and and still rings true despite the end of the Cold War.
Utah figures prominently in the author's essays, with a look at Mount Carmel Junction and a gigantic twister in the Utah "desert of Deseret."
No one can argue that Las Vegas isn't one of the strangest places around, and in the book's longest chapter there's an essay on this "American Byzantium." The essay also includes some history of the Mormons who settled in the Las Vegas area.
Most of the book's chapters are deep enough that you probably can't absorb all the intriguing angles in just one reading. It would probably be best to reread the lightning chapter during a storm, the wind section on a windy day and so forth.
One chapter, "How Baldy Tried to Kill Me," deals with the author's struggle to successfully climb Arizona's second-highest summit (11,403 feet above sea level). For some 20 years, nature seemed to conspire against him — from a close lightning strike, to unusual storms, to a bear and other wildlife.
Folklore is also intertwined in the essays, with talk of a secret underground lake in the Grand Canyon and of Indian legends about the volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest.
Mountains, as the book's title suggests, are the most prominent fixture in the book, and the author examines them using many different philosophies.
Although the book seems pricey at $22.95, this is a timeless work that could offer generations of reading opportunities to those who love the outdoors and want to ponder and reflect about nature, man and the unknown.
E-MAIL: lynn@desnews.com