Seasons: Desert Sketches

“I have just stapled my hair to the roof,” begins Seasons, a glimmer of the wry wit to come in this posthumous collection of writing from the late Ellen Meloy. Originally recorded as audio stories for NPR Utah in the 1990s, these essays evoke the Colorado Plateau and Southwest canyon country Meloy called home and muse. As with her Pulitzer-shortlisted The Anthropology of Turquoise and Eating Stone, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Meloy is funny and insightful as she links humans and nature in surprising ways. From the profound beauty of Navajo culture milling about the post office to the admirable anarchy of little old ladies in Buicks, not much escaped Meloy’s observant eye for sifting connections out of the finest grains of redrock dust. Annie Proulx’s foreword and Meloy’s own illustrations help anchor this feather of a book, a slight 94 pages, into a vessel steadfast and endearing.