If Mountains Die: A New Mexico Memoir
by John Nichols, William Davis
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Nichols, William DavisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-12-19
ISBN: 0393311597
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of If Mountains Die: A New Mexico Memoir
Book Review: Two passionate lovers of a place
Summary: 5 Stars
John Nichols's short, prescient essays and Bill Davis's photographs constitute a classic memoir of a place. The book describes a small Hispanic and Native American agricultural community forced to modernize by big business and a group of hippies.
Nichols moved to Taos in 1969, after an "eye-opening and life-changing trip" to Guatemala, which gave him a perspective on the disparity of wealth and poverty. He found a similar battle in Taos with Taos farmers fighting against the construction of a dam.
Davis came from Georgia almost 40 years ago; he arrived in Taos on Christmas Eve: "The mystery so captivated my heart and soul that in the years since I have had little cause to leave the village of Taos and its surrounding countryside."
Nichols lived (and still lives) in a three-room adobe, drove an ancient Dodge pickup, and worked "the graveyard shift", writing every night from about 10 pm until dawn. "And I love this wounded valley for precisely the same reasons that I often hate it: It is one of the few places that I have ever been that I have truly taken personally."
Nichols went on to write a trilogy of novels, essential to understand the conflicts between this indigenous society and "progress": The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel, The Magic Journey: A Novel and The Nirvana Blues: A Novel.
Nichols's essays in If Mountains Die deal with the difficulties and joys of living in an adobe building, the joy of trout fishing, and the challenges of maintaining the irrigation system. His most moving passages deal with his neighbors and their efforts to maintain their way of life.
Davis contributed sixty-five color photographs that capture the mountains, mesas, forests, deserts, rivers and farmland in several seasons. People rarely appear in the photographs; the scenery predominates; but the impact of humanity is always in evidence.
Together, Nichols and Davis have created a extraordinary memoir of a wonderful place.
Robert C. Ross 2008
Summary of If Mountains Die: A New Mexico Memoir
A celebration?in words and pictures?of one of the most beautiful areas of the United States: the Taos Valley of northern New Mexico.
This eloquent, moving, and often funny book is his account of exactly how his life has been transformed by daily, intimate contact with this extraordinary landscape?at once hostile and nurturing?and by his growing sense of responsibility toward the land and the people who live there. Nichols writes with wry amusement about the joys and tribulations of living in an adobe farmhouse that is always at the mercy of nature. He is rapturous about the pleasures of trout fishing in mountain streams and graphic about the difficulties of maintaining a primitive, but vital irrigation system. But he is most passionate about his farmer neighbors and thier continuing struggle to prtect a rewarding way of life and a precariously balanced ecological system that are both increasingly threatened by overcrowding and human greed. To complement Nichols's deeply felt text, William Davis has provided sixty-five color photographs that dramatically capture the variety and intensity of this astonishing land?mountain and mesa, forest and desert, river and farmland?in all its seasons and moods. The result is a lyric tribute to one of the last truly wild areas of the United States.Ethnic & National Books
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