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At eighteen, Vermont-native Leath Tonino ventured west to attend college in Colorado. Upon hearing his destination, many of Tonino’s friends and family predicted that he’d never come back; he’d make the “land of endless space and sky, its ranges and their storms” his home. “The West will swallow you,” one said, in a tone that felt like part warning and part prophecy.
More than a decade later Tonino continues to call Vermont his home. But despite his love of New England and his admiration for writers who sing the praises of their native ground, he concedes that he is, as Gary Snyder once phrased it, “promiscuous with landscapes.” Tonino has spent the intervening years since college traversing “the alphabet of the American West from AZ to CA to UT to WY” and writing about its mysterious and powerful beauty. The resulting musings are collected in The West Will Swallow You, the title of which is a nod to the words that stayed with him and that, in many ways, turned out to be true.
Although the adventures gathered here range widely in terrain and tone, the western landscape is always front and center—focusing on Arizona’s remote Kaibab Plateau, where Tonino worked as a biologist studying raptor communities, in San Francisco’s overgrown nooks and crannies and pigeon-flocked park benches, on ranches in Wyoming, at campsites in Nevada, in the mountains of Colorado, and “in libraries and national monuments, in people, in a midnight fox’s eyes, in the rushing wind.”
More than a decade later Tonino continues to call Vermont his home. But despite his love of New England and his admiration for writers who sing the praises of their native ground, he concedes that he is, as Gary Snyder once phrased it, “promiscuous with landscapes.” Tonino has spent the intervening years since college traversing “the alphabet of the American West from AZ to CA to UT to WY” and writing about its mysterious and powerful beauty. The resulting musings are collected in The West Will Swallow You, the title of which is a nod to the words that stayed with him and that, in many ways, turned out to be true.
Although the adventures gathered here range widely in terrain and tone, the western landscape is always front and center—focusing on Arizona’s remote Kaibab Plateau, where Tonino worked as a biologist studying raptor communities, in San Francisco’s overgrown nooks and crannies and pigeon-flocked park benches, on ranches in Wyoming, at campsites in Nevada, in the mountains of Colorado, and “in libraries and national monuments, in people, in a midnight fox’s eyes, in the rushing wind.”
Price: $13.99
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Imprint: Trinity University Press
Publication Date:
24 October 2019
ISBN: 9781595349040
Format: eBook
BISACs:
TRAVEL / Essays & Travelogues, NATURE / Essays, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Adventurers & Explorers
“Exciting new trends in natural history....there can be no better introduction to these trends than Fleischner’s anthology.... Most of Fleischner’s contributors offer completely new insights.” — Bloomsbury Review“A gem of a little book.” — Terrain.org
“This eclectic collection has much to offer anyone who cares about the environment, sustainability, and, yes, nature. ” — SEJournal [Society of Environmental Journalists]“There is so much to admire in these pages, and to love.” — Loree Griffin Burns, founder of A Life in Books blog
“A collection of compelling essays....this book is a welcome reminder that our relationship to nature might be much better if we simply started paying some honest and accurate attention to it.” — San Antonio Express-News
“Nature writing with a contemplative bent.” — Shambhala Sun
“This eclectic collection has much to offer anyone who cares about the environment, sustainability, and, yes, nature. ” — SEJournal [Society of Environmental Journalists]“There is so much to admire in these pages, and to love.” — Loree Griffin Burns, founder of A Life in Books blog
“A collection of compelling essays....this book is a welcome reminder that our relationship to nature might be much better if we simply started paying some honest and accurate attention to it.” — San Antonio Express-News
“Nature writing with a contemplative bent.” — Shambhala Sun
Leath Tonino has been a full-time freelance writer since 2011. He is the author of The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures and The West Will Swallow You and numerous articles and essays in the Sun, the Progressive, Tricycle, Outside, Orion, Men’s Journal, Sierra, and the Utne Reader. He is the recipient of a Colorado College Award in Literature, a Bread Loaf scholarship, an Awesome Foundation grant, and two gold medals from the International Regional Magazine Association. He is a poetry editor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and has worked as a wildlife biologist in Arizona, a blueberry farmer in New Jersey, and a snow shoveler in Antarctica. He lives in northern Vermont.