Eating Stone

July 25, 2005
It takes a bit of obsession to sit on sandstone ledges and watch desert bighorn sheep through a telescope for a year. This is just what Meloy (who died last November), shortlisted for the Pulitzer for her The Anthropology of Turquoise
, did to slake her thirst to understand a group of sheep in Utah's canyonlands—a group she nicknamed the Blue Door Band. In this record of her study, Meloy, like the best naturalists, is a keen observer of the landscape and the habitat it provides. The band, just back from the brink of extinction, clings to the edges of the cliffs suspended in what Meloy calls "an island" of "deep landscape." She is concerned with the impact of the loss of the wild on humans' ability to exist, once wondering if losing species will "leave us brain damaged." However, a surprising levity punctuates the book, as when she writes, "Only sheep and lions fully understand sheep-lion dynamics." This humor balances her darker observations about the crushing footprint of humanity on the wild. In emotional, visceral prose Meloy makes no apologies for anthropomorphizing the rams and the ewes, writing, "I wanted the sheep to adopt me, a kind of reverse Bo Peep arrangement." Agent, Philippa Brophy.