God’s Country or Devil’s Playground: The Best Nature Writing from the Big Bend of Texas (Corrie Herring Hooks Series, Number Fifty-Four)

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Description

The dramatic desert landscapes of the Big Bend country along the Texas-Mexico border reminded historian Walter Prescott Webb of “an earth-wreck through which a super part of country used to be shaken down, turned over, blown up, and set on fire.” By contrast, naturalist Aldo Leopold thought to be the region a mountainous paradise through which even the wild Mexican parrots had no greater concern than “whether this new day which creeps slowly over the canyons is bluer or golder than its predecessors, or less so.” Whether it impresses people as God’s country or as the devil’s playground, the Big Bend in most cases evokes strong responses from almost everyone who lives or visits there.

In this anthology of nature writing, Barney Nelson gathers nearly sixty literary perspectives at the landscape and life of the Big Bend region, broadly defined as Trans-Pecos Texas and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Along with Leopold and Webb, the collection includes such well-known writers as Edward Abbey, Mary Austin, Roy Bedichek, and Frederick Olmsted, in addition to a variety of voices that includes explorers, trappers, cowboys, ranch wives, curanderos, college presidents, scientists, locals, tourists, historians, avisadores, and waitresses. Following a personal introduction by Barney Nelson, the pieces are grouped thematically to highlight the distinctive ways through which writers have responded to the Big Bend.

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