Stone Desert: A Naturalist's Exploration of Canyonlands National Park (signed)
Englewood, CO: Westcliffe Publisher, 1995. First edition. Softcover. A local association copy, his first book, only published in softcover (a paperback original), and here inscribed on the title page: "For Frank & Penny, In case we don't meet soon, here is an update on this wild life. I am hoping to encounter your wild life in the near future. Craig Leland Childs." Uncommon signed. Kind of a cool copy additionally: Below the inscription the recipients have written: "May 1995, Book party at Bosworth's." Then they have written their names opposite, on the verso of the front wrap: "Frank and Penny Starr, 124 Bristlecone Drive, Ridgway, CO, 81432 . . . 30 June 1995 --Received from Ed and June Bosworth at Kelly River Station, Northwest Alaska Areas, Noatak National Preserve, Alaska, We were returning from a 300 mile plus float of the Noatak River." That is a wild life. The Starrs are a good story, it turns out. Frank Starr (see his obit) was a dentist and faculty at Ohio State University and Penny was a dental hygienist and state senate candidate, but after their children graduated from college they gave that up to both earn a degree in Wildlife Management and become National Park Rangers for 15 years, an experience they wrote about in Over the Rainbow: The Road Taken. Eventually they retired in Colorado where they would have been neighbors of Craig Childs. See also this interview with them in The Oregonian. Craig Childs, meanwhile, is one of our most adventurous naturalist-writers, devoted to chronicling deserts and their inhabitants, past and present; he is twice the winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. Stone Desert marks the beginning of this incredible career and includes his pen-and-ink sketches, which we don't believe appear in his later books. This book won Sierra magazine's Nature Writing Competition and was reissued in 2022 by Torrey House Press. A very good plus copy with light sunning to spine, otherwise tight. A nice National Park and neighborly association. Very good. Item #1657
ISBN: 1565794737
Price: $275.00 save 5% $261.25