InfernoCharles Bowden has been an outspoken advocate for the desert Southwest since the 1970s. Recently his activism helped persuade the U.S. government to create the Sonoran Desert National Monument in southern Arizona. But in working for environmental preservation, Bowden refuses to be one who “outline[s] something straightforward, a manifesto with clear rules and a set of plans for others to follow.” In this deeply personal book, he brings the Sonoran Desert alive, not as a place where well-meaning people can go to enjoy “nature,” but as a raw reality that defies bureaucratic and even literary attempts to define it, that can only be experienced through the senses. Inferno burns with Charles Bowden's passion for the desert he calls home. “I want to eat the dirt and lick the rock. Or leave the shade for the sun and feel the burning. I know I don't belong here. But this is the only place I belong,” he says. His vivid descriptions, complemented by Michael Berman's acutely observed photographs of the Sonoran Desert, make readers feel the heat and smell the dryness, see the colors in earth and sky, and hear the singing of dry bones across the parched ground. Written as “an antibiotic” during the time Bowden was lobbying the government to create the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Inferno repudiates both the propaganda and the lyricism of contemporary nature writing. Instead, it persuades us that “we need these places not to remember our better selves or our natural self or our spiritual self. We need these places to taste what we fear and devour what we are. We need these places to be animals because unless we are animals we are nothing at all. That is the price of being a civilized dude.” |
From inside the book
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Contents
Section 1 | 7 |
Section 2 | 8 |
Section 3 | 10 |
Section 4 | 13 |
Section 5 | 14 |
Section 6 | 17 |
Section 7 | 21 |
Section 8 | 26 |
Section 20 | 105 |
Section 21 | 106 |
Section 22 | 109 |
Section 23 | 114 |
Section 24 | 121 |
Section 25 | 125 |
Section 26 | 126 |
Section 27 | 130 |
Section 9 | 33 |
Section 10 | 38 |
Section 11 | 60 |
Section 12 | 65 |
Section 13 | 69 |
Section 14 | 74 |
Section 15 | 77 |
Section 16 | 78 |
Section 17 | 79 |
Section 18 | 83 |
Section 19 | 102 |
Section 28 | 133 |
Section 29 | 139 |
Section 30 | 153 |
Section 31 | 162 |
Section 32 | 165 |
Section 33 | 166 |
Section 34 | 168 |
Section 35 | 172 |
Section 36 | 173 |
Common terms and phrases
appetite balance belong birds blood blue bones singing breasts burning CHARLES BOWDEN cocaine coffee color coming course coyotes dawn dead death Decca record desert Díaz dirt dreams drink dunes earth empty espresso everything eyes face fall fear feel feet fingers flesh fucking gray greasewood grosbeak ground hair head hear heat hole hummingbirds hunger inside kind leave legs lick light live look Marquis de Sade Medusa Melchior Díaz mesquite miles moon mountain mouth move nature never night numbers panties rabbits ranch rats rock saguaro Saltillo tile sand scent scream sense silence singing bones skin sleep smell snakes Sonoran Desert sound spinning Squaw Tit stare suck tarantula hawk taste thing thirst tiny cup tongue touch trail trees trucks Walden Pond walk wash watch window woman words yearning