Burntwater
TheBurntwaterof Scott Thybony's title is a place you will not find  on any map: a tiny point on the vast Colorado Plateau, its name commemorates a  Navajo shepherd's once having melted ice by building a circle of fire. Traveling  through this magical land, Thybony takes us along on a quest to understand the  traditional Navajo blessingHozho naninaadoo,"Go in beauty." This  is, he writes, "not the beauty of surfaces alone, but an indwelling beauty that  enfolds and completes, a life-restoring beauty." Full of anthropology, geology,  and history, Thybony's book wanders into haunted side-canyons and over tall  mountains. His love of this austere land is evident at every turn, and his essays deepen  our understanding of the beauty that lies all around us.