Panelist Bailey heard about it on National Public Radio. Childs had gone to Sasquatch Books in far away, well-watered Washington, to find a publisher for his book about the parched Sonoran desert and its environs. Among other things, you'll trek in search of elusive water holes in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and explore a cave that's the source of an icy spring in a side canyon of the Grand Canyon. You'll gain insights into life teeming in the desert where water miraculously exists. Childs' descriptive narrative is engaging, thoughtful, clever and passionate.
Essays range in subject matter from desert storms to desert grasses.
From human and plant ecology to bird and mammal species. Among other things, you will learn what makes a desert, the life history of grasshoppers and the impact of man on the natural environment along with practical advice on nature watching. It's a volume that invites superlatives. Despite the best efforts of Louis L'Amour and company, fiction is a rarity in Southwest literature. Well, admitted fiction, that is.