Broken Country: Mountains and Memory

Rating:
Summary: Chief cook and horse wrangler: a summer memoir
Review: If spending two summer months in the western mountains of Wyoming herding sheep sounds like your idea of fun, think again. C. L. Rawlins' day-by-day reminiscences based on a journal he kept in 1973 as cook and horse wrangler for a sheepherder makes no bones about it -- the scenery may be breathtaking, but the work is mostly back breaking and sometimes dangerous. Rawlins, in his early 20s, takes the job as a kind of escape from several personal struggles, including an ambivalence about the war in Vietnam, which has caused a rift with his family. There's also a romance that's gone somewhat haywire.

But almost immediately, the mountains, still under snow in mid-July at the high passes, and the demanding work envelope him in a physical world where his only human companion is a pony-tailed sheepherder, Mitch, not much older than himself. There is wind, rain, sun, hail, more rain, heat, frost, and then snow again before the short summer is over. There are bear, coyotes, hawks and other wildlife. There are walks by moonlight, and reading Homer by candlelight. There's the round of meals to be prepared: bacon, beans, chili, tortillas, currant muffins, rhubarb pie.

They meet a team of Basque herders. Driving in on old logging roads, Rawlins' brother visits until they get on each other nerves. Then his girlfriend visits, and after their heated lovemaking tells him she's seeing someone else. Through it all, the author recounts the emotional ups and downs of a young man unsure of his place in the world, but sure of one thing -- that he has a deep fascination for this "broken country" of mountain ranges, rocky ridges, wildflowers, streams, and meadows. Much of his book is rich with detailed descriptions of carefully observed landscapes. I felt when I finished the book that I had been on a long journey away from civilization.

Writing 20 years later, Rawlins preserves the point of view of his younger self, complete with the youthful excesses that express his angst and exuberance, often told in short personal poems. I recommend this book to anyone interested in nature writing, the mountain West, ranching, and roughing it in the outdoors. Definitely worth adding to a Western nonfiction bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The impression I got from this book is mainly that Rawlins himself is an unpleasant fellow, in a whiny sort of way. Good Lord, why complain so much about having rhubarb for dessert? His unpleasantness wouldn't matter so much if the book wasn't, in a sense, a diary, the kind of book where the reader is thrust into the company of the writer from beginning to end.

There are also lots of lyrical descriptions of snow, rocks, ice, mountains, etc.; other people may go for that sort of stuff, but I found it self-indulgent and pointless. Give me Edward Abbey over this fellow.