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Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water....
Our early summer was rudely interrupted with the report of a wild fire near Pack Creek the afternoon of June 9th. Pack Creek is not only a remote housing community at the foot of the La Sal Mountains, it is also Moab's primary watershed and recreation area for parched desert dwellers. Three weeks later the Pack Creek Fire is 80% contained, leaving nearly 10,000 acres in ashes and four homes and several outbuildings destroyed.
What connection, you ask does a wild fire have with a bookstore? John Muir was correct. Everything is connected: Our community, our landscape, and Back of Beyond Books, has a direct connection to our local environment and its well-being. The link between climate change and the drying west is inescapable . As a store which specializes in environmental literature and with a staff deeply ingrained within the Moab Community and our natural world, the fire hits us hard.
In reaction, Back of Beyond hosted a community gathering which allowed for healing through words. Here is a link to the Facebook Live event: https://fb.watch/6r87g7mypn/
The story posted on KZMU.org featured an interview with a wildfire social scientist on the concept of ‘solastalgia,’ a term that describes the emotional distress caused from environmental change. Here is that short feature:
Further, the bookstore has a direct literary connection to Pack Creek Ranch, home of Ken and Jane Sleight. In the words of fellow bookman Ken Sanders: "I first met Ken Sleight in the 1970s about the time Ed Abbey published The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). Ken and Ed were good friends and Ed borrowed a lot of characteristics from Ken for the Seldom Seen Smith character in the MWG. He took me along as a boatman on a Deso trip and I guess he taught me how to row a boat. Ken at the time was based in Green River and had a house and boatyard near the railroad tracks, and a small bookshop in the old bank building. Ken and Ed owned a farm on the banks of the Green River called Willow Bend. The next thing you know Ken and Jane Sleight picked the Pack Creek Ranch property. I cannot begin to tell you how many wonderful and one of a kind adventures I had at Pack Creek with the Sleights. You undoubtedly can top my memories with your own stories.
I am choosing to dwell in the past and the magical stories of that time, deliberately over the devastating truth of the ruins of Pack Creek and Ken's Quonset hut and the reality that is sinking in, in the aftermath of an alleged human being who would set a campfire in a tinder dry forest on a 100 degree day in the middle of a summer in the middle of one of the worst droughts we have ever seen and then walk away from it.
Ken's man cave lies an empty hot metal shell with nothing left inside. All of Ken's life was stored in that shed, going back to his beginnings as a river guide, taking boy scouts through Glen Canyon back in the 1950s as Wonderland Expeditions, all of the papers and documents relating to his suing the NPS over their attempts to flood The Rainbow Bridge with the foul waters of Lake Powell. Everything is now gone except Kens memories and ours."
Ken Sleight is an environmental hero of our time. Funds are being raised to assist the Sleights. If you are of mind, we can pass on checks made out to Ken and Jane Sleight. Send them to the store: Back of Beyond Books ATTN: Andy
83 N. Main St. Moab, UT 84532
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Sam's Pick
Most often, I seek nonfiction writing that is closely based to my home. Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist is anything but that. Writing from Northern Ireland, he communes with white-throated dippers and dor beetles, blackberries and pyramidal bugles. It’s a lush environment, all sea-cliff and spray. Dara is sixteen, an activist and a naturalist, who chronicles a year in his life by diary entries. His year is shaped his family, deeply connected to each other and their world; his social-environmental work to preserve our natural world; and the interspersed banalities of navigating teenage life. Throughout it all, there is deep and wild communion with a teeming and vivacious place.
I didn’t find my home in this book, but I came away with a piece of Dara’s. His writing is tidy and beautiful, unembellished so that the abundant wonder stands on its own. Diary is a book informed by a life of care and attention, close communion with nature, and a family entwined by wonder and love. It is a pleasure to spend this year in Dara’s head, reflecting the change of season back onto ourselves in the ways we likewise grow and ebb. This book will make you wider-eyed and more closely grounded. This book will take you far away and then it will bring you back to home.
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Shari's Pick
In my days of Lonely Planet travel, especially through Asia, in every guest house and hostel we’d settle in for the night we’d, oddly, compare our tales of bug bites, dysentery and other strange things we’d picked up along the way. These were admittedly grave conversations, but very necessary.
Not sure it was this echo from a guest house in Dehli, or simple curiosity that found me reading The Kissing Bug by Daisy Hernandez. On the surface, The Kissing Bug is a history of Chagas, a disease (virus) carried in the belly of a bloodsucking insect commonly known as the kissing bug. This disease is found mostly in South and Central America and Mexico. A deeper reading of this book reveals the story of a disease that killed Hernandez’ aunt, the relationship Hernandez shared with her aunt (helping to care for her), the world she inhabited growing up as a first generation Columbian immigrant, and even, coming out as bisexual.
Simultaneous love letter, and journalistic foray, Hernandez brings a long overdue voice to a disease that has been overlooked for years. She reveals the reasons why Chagas has been so under-researched and goes into detail about why, to this day it continues to be called the poor persons disease. This is a story of family, of immigration, of a complex relationship to a beloved aunt, and how it changed the course of a life. The Kissing Bug is both emotionally and scientifically sound, a memoir that, if you love memoir, won’t disappoint.
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Join Shari and Andy from Back of Beyond Books and Jessie of the Grand County Public Library Monday July 5th at 5pm for the Radio Book Club. These three are voracious readers and will provide many great reading choices and new book reviews. It's a lively discussion! Tune in locally at 90.1 or 106.7 or world-wide at KZMU.org
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Andy's Pick
This month we release a selection utterly and completely different than our usual lists: A small selection from the archives of Wendelle Stevens, noted UFOlogist.
Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens, born 1923 in Round Prairie, Minnesota, was a leading ufologist for more than 50 years and the creator of one of the largest private UFO photo archives known. Stevens’ interest in the UFO phenomenon was kindled by his experience as an Air Force pilot in the Arctic after the end of World War II, where he encountered mysterious radio transmissions while working as part of a classified project to photograph and map the area using new technology. Stevens began his own investigations after retiring from the Air Force and in 1979 published the 4-volume UFO… Contact from the Pleiades, which detailed the extraterrestrial experiences of Eduard “Billy” Meier and established Stevens’ reputation in the world of Ufology. Over the following three decades, Stevens amassed his collection of UFO photographs from around the world, researching and writing articles about the encounter stories they illustrated and appearing as an expert at UFO conferences internationally. From his home in Tucson, he was the Director of Investigations for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) and a founder of the International UFO Congress. In total, Stevens authored or coauthored more than 22 UFO-related monographs. Colonel Stevens received a lifetime achievement award at the First World UFO Forum in Brasilia, 1997. He passed away in Tucson, Arizona, in 2010.
Here is the link:
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Seven Ways to buy books locally and to support your community!!
2) Come to the store. 83 N. Main St. The store is open Thursday thru Sunday 9am to 9pm and 9am to 5 pm Monday thru Wednesday.
3) Call us. 1-800-700-2859 or 435-259-5154. We have our database handy and are happy to hand deliver in the Moab Valley or drop-ship to your home. Special order titles are usually 20% off.
4) E-mail us at orders@backofbeyondbooks.com
Our website offers about 300 of our best selling regional titles.
6) Buy gift cards--it's like money in your book bank.
7) Purchase your audio books via https://libro.fm/ As long as you identify Back of Beyond Books as your bookseller, we will receive a % of the sale.
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Andy Nettell
83 North Main Street
Moab, UT 84532
(435) 259 5154
1-800-700-2859
Instagram: @backofbeyondbooks
Facebook: facebook.com/moabbooks
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