Integrating personal narrative and natural history, Fleischner presents what he calls a "guide to understanding" the relatively unknown landscape of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Like a bright blue seam incised deep in solid rock, the Escalante River binds the fir forests of Utah's High Plateau with the barren deserts of the canyonlands region in the newly designed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. To this wild landscape, naturalist Thomas Fleischner brings both emotional engagement and a wealth of knowledge. With unabashed passion and patient and learned observations Fleischner presents this relatively unknown landscape. Singing Stone is ideal for curious visitors to the national monument as well as students of environmental studies. Fleischner's background as a conservation biologist and former park ranger, a professor of environmental studies, and a naturalist in the Escalante Region for almost twenty years has provided him with a deep reservoir of experience and knowledge. The book's first three chapters survey the unique geology, flora and fauna, and human history of the region. Chapters four and five trace the more recent impacts of human activities-grazing and wilderness recreation-and explore the shifts in cultural values and public policy that have occurred as a result. Examining these topics in the context of a specific landscape offers a lens through which these changes, now the topic of examination and controversy throughout the New West, can be clearly seen and, hopefully, re-evaluated.
Thomas Lowe Fleischner's articles and essays on topics pertinent to western ecology have been widely published in journals such as Conservation Biology and in books including The Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management.
Acknowledgments Prologue: From the Oxbow 1. The Terrain of Delight Tales of Deep Time The Soul of Stone Unwarping and Downcutting The Work of a River 2. The Texture of Life The Grace of Animals The Green Gift Mapping Life How Snakes Kiss 3. Walking Upright Chipping Stone With Blade of Chert Here Comes Europe In the Promised Land "More Beauty Than I Can Bear" 4. Home on the Range? A Reluctant Path Toward Policy Resisting Change Meanwhile, Back at the Fence 5. Hungry for Fun The Concrete Curtain Forever Wild? The Governor in the Gym The Fun Boom Epilogue: The Evening Light Can Be Touched Taxonomy of Species Mentioned in Text Notes References Index
"[Fleischner's] book is not only informative and entertaining, but offers a lens through which we can examine the future of this region of Utah."-Orion "Fleischner's book on the Escalante Canyons may have been produced by a conservation biologist, but it is written from the gut.... baiting our appetites for wilderness-and wildness-by offering us tastes of an extraordinary place.... Scientists, aesthetes, and red rock desert rats alike, rejoice! Singing Stone is both history and science, as well as an intimate encounter with a wild desert land."-Wild Earth magazine "The reader is swiftly snapped to attention, engaged by clear, passionate writing. Fleischner guides readers on a celebration of this region's enigmas, while informing on a breadth of topics comprising the landscapes complexity."-Colorado Plateau Advocate, magazine of the Grand Canyon Trust "Reading this book is like taking a tour with an expert guide."-Idaho Librarian "This book is a good source of the history of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the changes it has seen over the centuries. It is structured not as a reference book, but as a guide to be read in a leisurely fashion, cover-to-cover. Fleischner does a wonderful job illustrating the delicate balance between nature and culture."-Utah Archaeology "Well-organized, beautifully written, and thoroughly documented."-CHOICE "Value-laden, sincere, and close to the ground."-The Daily Courier, Prescott, Arizona
