1 comments about Through the Yellowstone Park on Horseback (Idaho Yesterdays (Moscow, Idaho).).

1. George W. Wingate was a man in full for his time. With his Civil War compatriot Col. William C. Church, Wingate published the first manual on rifle marksmanship in 1870. The following year the pair established the National Rifle Association.

   In 1885, Wingate's concern for the health of his 17-year old daughter and his sense of adventure led him, his wife and their eldest daughter, May, to plan a horseback trip through Yellowstone National Park. Doctors believed the trip would improve May's health. It did.

   The Wingates rode 460 miles in just 26 days, returning to New York City bedazzled by the park and in fine spirits.

   Wingate's book, Through the Yellowstone Park on Horseback, provides a faithful and fascinating account of early tourist travel. The University of Idaho Press provides a service by republishing the book and reminding us of Yellowstone's marvelous history.

   Wingate was also a faithful observer. He provided fine sketches of Western culture, from an Army fort past its prime, to profiles of those he hired to guide his family through the park. Hunters and anglers will enjoy his accounts of adventures during the journey.

   The book offers a valuable perspective for those who have visited the park. It also may spur readers who love historical books to visit Yellowstone.

5 comments about Gerry Spence's Wyoming: The Landscape.

1. For this right-wing gun-nut, Gerry Spence is one of my favorite lefties. I used to enjoy his MSNBC program, hearing his crystal clear and caustic barbs, his populist message and his most learned opinions on legal cases circulating at the time. Most importantly, he was one of the few on the left who saw the massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco for the brutal and horrific slaughter at the hands of Janet Reno that it was.
   
   That is what the world needs most: Honest men and women, who don't flinch from the truth when the truth happens to gore oxen on their side of their political fence. Like the land from which he hails, Gerry Spence brims over with the pioneer spirit: Rough and rugged, independent and erudite, full of common sense and plain decency, he is a man more at home in the 19th than the 20th century (never mind the weak and effete "metrosexual" wussies of this 21st century).
   
   One could call this book "The Memoirs of the Last Real Man." Though his photography is traditionalist, somewhat akin to the formalistic work of Ansel Adams, the vision is singularly Spence's. A labor of love, a visual celebrating of the artist's solitary homeland, one can sense that where most men see only barren badlands, Spence sees splendrous vistas, touched by the hand of the Creator.
   
   Although his photographs are bold, they are yet quiet and bare the soul of a man who's quite comfortable in his own skin. They are simple, yet powerful, documents of a land upon which man is but a temporal, fleeting presence. The permanance of the land is the only constant.
   
   Thus are his most interesting landscapes not one's purely of nature, but of the fragile hand of man before the inevitability of nature's supremacy: Abandoned dwellings, out-of-business gas stations, empty granaries are but shadows of their former bustling selves. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
   
   His portraits do not overlook this truth; the few humans portrayed in this text are part and parcel of the land -- a cowboy, a mountaineer, a modern-day Annie Oakley, a Shoshoni Indian. These are not people who are enslaved by the claustrophobic office cubicle.
   
   Thus does Spence write in the poem "The People Are the Landscape":
   
   The people are the landscape,
   The woman on the county grader
   Plowing out the last of last winter's snow
   The wild crying Shoshoni dancing,
   His days not done
   The shepherd by his wagon
   Lost in a landscape of bleeting,
   Old faces furrowed in the sun.
   Their faces are the landscape,
   Their faces, the land,
   Hard and honest,
   With no pretensions in the morning.
   
   Absent is the didactic, pedantic hectoring of the man-hating environmentalists; Spence understands intuitively the American Indian conception that man is part of the Earth, and that before he returns to the Earth, that his place is properly living in harmony with the Earth, for the Earth is his grandmother.
   
   This book, though by a celebrity attorney, is the furthest thing from the vapid and glitzy world of celebrity. It is the work of a man alone, relating through his eyes and mind how nature and man have moved him. In awe, to tears, with laughter.



2. Gerry Spence is a man of many talents, photography, however, may not be his strongest. The photographs are much better than your average snapshot, but not quite as impressive as they should be to have been published. All in all, the images are a bit of a dissapointment if one wants to appreciate fine art photography.



3. 
   Thank you,Gerry,for the wonderful experience of experiencing the wonders of Wyoming. Spending the time listening to you read your poems while following the words in the book and bringing it to life with your personal photographs;is a real pleasure.
   It's been said, that someone once asked Picasso how long it took him to paint one of his pictures. His reply was that it took about 40 years. With that thought in mind,it can surely be said that it took Gerry Spence at least 40 years, but more likely closer to a lifetime of 70 years to gain the love and feeling of his country to write this wonderful book.
   I have read a few of his books,but none convey the feel of his surroundings and country as well as this book does.
   I am not a particular fan of recorded books;but in this case ,the combination of photographs,written words to follow,while we listen to Gerry's impassioned reading is simply stunning.
   The photograph of the girl sitting in the window of a long abandoned log cabin is accompanied with this short,haunting poem;
   
   They Have Gone
   
   They have gone,
   And here we are,
   Flying on the wings of history.
   
   captures the days of the pioneers who settled the land.
   
   Then we see the two photographs on pages 82 and 83.An abandoned cabin at close range and then at a distance across water.One can feel how glad to see his cabin at a distance,the owner must have been, when it came into view; and then how glad he was to finally reach its door.It takes the soul of an artist ,first to see this scene and then capture it with his camera.The reader is left with wondering what stories this cabin could tell.
   
   Gerry captures this land with this poem;
   
   It's over
   This is the last roundup.
   We have abandoned the long prairies
   And the endless,rolling mountains,
   We have abandoned this blessed realm
   To the antelope,the prairie dogs
   And a new horde of interlopers
   Who chop the land
   Into mournful pieces
   For investment bankers
   Who hanker to become
   Real cowboys on twenty acres.
   
   Thank you,Gerry,for sharing this landscape,people and quickly disappearing way of life with us.



4. I received this book today. I sat down and looked at the pictures as I read the poems. I found it to be a wonderful book. The pictures told a story. I found the poems to be very good. Gerry Spence has a voice that one could never tire of hearing. It shows the landscape of Wyoming, not the tourist traps. This a long way from the home that Gerry Spence and his lovely wife Imaging occupy in Jackson Hole. Good job Gerry, if one did not know you were such a celebrity, it would never be guessed by looking at the wonderful black and white pictures with the story telling poems.



5. When I saw that Gerry Spence had a book of his favorite photographs of Wyoming that he made, I thought, "man this is gonna be great. It's Wyoming, which is a place like no other, and it's Gerry Spence, a man like no other."
   
   I have to give him respect, he has talent in photography. It looks like he's studied Ansel Adams quite a bit and he has similar equipment. You do have to sit out in the elements quite a long while to get a good shot, which bespeaks his endurance and willingness to do the best job he can when it's his name behind it. That's pretty seldom nowdays, which I respect. He has an eye for the right shot as well, which says he's a man of the outdoors who has practiced a lot.
   
   I thought his poetry sounded too much like what you'd say in a final argument at a jury trial. That works incredibly well - a fellow attorney, I wish I were as fluid with words and spoken imagery as he is - but as "poetry" it's out of place here I think, because you can still feel the litigious "feel" of what the poetry is. Nature doesn't know plaintiff and defendant, even if the defendants are S.O.B.'s as they usually are.
   
   There are also too many of the same types of images. He'll have a great image here or there - there's a picture of a colony of quaking-aspen that's just great, but there are many other pictures of the same sort of subject matter, trees crest in snow under a sunny winter sky.
   
   It's Gerry Spence here. Pure and simple - with some strengths that you wouldn't have thought he had, but with some choices that I wouldn't've made myself which take away from the effect that he's trying to present to you, the reader who's not from Wyoming and hasn't experienced what he's experienced in his life. I can see what the effect is that he's aiming at but it's too personalized to the guy that took the pictures and wrote the text. That's how I'd say it. He has some moments of greatness in it though - that's why I give it 3 stars. It wasn't what I'd have thought it would have been at all, but then again, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be somebody else's thing completely.

2 comments about Big Wonderful: Notes from Wyoming.

1. Big Wonderful is guaranteed to make you laugh and cry as Mr. Holdsworth shares his experiences and knowledge of both life and death in the mountains and plains of Wyoming and Utah. The writer's mastery of the English language makes for an easy read as he takes you right along with him on his journeys. Holdsworth's descriptions of flora, fauna, and landscape are very articulate. The sections on Wyoming development are current and informative of what is happening to the landscape there today, while his sections on life experiences are easy to relate to. With his roots traced to pioneers of the old west, Kevin has researched his ancestor's trials and tribulations thoroughly and shares his unbiased knowledge with you. I would highly recommend this book to all outdoor enthusiasts and armchair mountaineers, and hope to see more books in the future from this talented, relatively new, author. Thanks so much Mr. Holdsworth for sharing your life with us.



2. First off, let me praise the physical beauty of this book from the University of Colorado press. It is handsome, artful, a pleasure to navigate--a perfect container for the writing itself. Invest in this book and the people who made it. Holdsworth evokes southwestern Wyoming's wild beauty, rich history, hardscrabble present, and how living there has shaped him. As author Page Lambert put it on the book's back jacket blurb, "The only way to survive Wyoming is to simply give in to loving her." Holdsworth makes you love the place, even if you never, ever want to go there.

No comments about Wyoming: Prelude to statehood,.

No comments about Wyoming Vacation Guide.

No comments about Wyoming: A Photographic Celebration.

No comments about Travel Guide to the united States Volume III North Dakota to Wyoming.

1 comments about Frommer's America on Wheels Northwest & Great Plains 1997.

1. This is a very disappointing book. It tries to cover a very broad and very disconnected area of the United States. There are nine states crammed into its pages and each state hardly gets any coverage. A lot of great attractions, restaurants and lodgings are missed as this book tries to cover from Oregon to Iowa! In order to be a helpful travel guide, it should be split into a least two volumes. As it is right now, it is not worth the money.

4 comments about Insiders' Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, 4th (Insiders' Guide Series).

1. i can't imagine not having had this guide on my recent trip. it enhanced the experience immeasurably with tips about what to see and how to see it. this is the best of the insider's guides i've ever read. a necessity on your trip - make sure you pack it and leave out the spare socks!



2. If you are only going to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons this book is worthless. If you are going through the whole state and surrounding areas it might be o.k. There was ONE page each on hiking in Yellowstone and Tetons. If I had seen this book in the store, I would never have bought it. Lesson learned about on line buying.



3. I got this book at the library and boy am I glad I didn't buy it. There are much better Yellowstone/Grand Teton books out there, so avoid this one.
   
   If you want information on places to stay or eat around Yellowstone, this might be ok, but there seems to be little USEFUL information here. It lists a record store in Bozeman, MT, in case you want to know that, but it gives virtually no information on what to see in Yellowstone/Grand Teton. Of the 16 pages actually devoted to Yellowstone Park, for example, about 90% is devoted to places to stay or eat. In short, it's skewed toward the commercial aspects of the area, with very short shrift to the real attractions, the natural ones.
   
   The first section of the book is a perfunctory photo section of dull black and white pictures from the National Park Service. One shows a view of some interesting geological feature from the air and the caption is, "An aerial view in Yellowstone National Park." Duh. Another shot of a hot spring is captioned "A thermal explosion in Yellowstone National Park." Huh? No explosion I can see. Haven't these guys done their homework? And can't they operate a camera to take better pictures? This shows the level of attention to detail in this book.
   
   The Moon Handbook to Yellowstone by Don Pitcher is much, much better, as is the Frommer's Guide, and another Insiders' Guide called "Scenic Driving Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks" by Susan Butler is quite good, but doesn't cover dining and lodging.



4. TERRIBLE!!!!
   This insiders guide is less than you would expect in a free publication from the local chamber of commerce. Lists of motels and restaurants with pricing - YES. History of Yellowstone - YES. Real insight from someone who has actually been to Yellowstone would be a nice change from what is found in this book. The book provides 20-30 pages on the history of Yellowstone, the geological conditions, and some basic maps. Then it spends the rest of the entire book going through motels and restaurants in surrounding towns.
   There are plenty of other publications available. Try them first as this book falls far short of the content provided through a basic web search and a visit to the National Park Service web site.

No comments about ABC, come see Wyoming.