Where The Rain Children Sleep

Inspired by a year of hiking 120 desert canyons, Where the Rain Children Sleep is nature writing in the best tradition of Edward Abbey, Ann Zwinger, and Terry Tempest Williams. Much more than one man's memoir of his time in these canyons, this eclectic collection is well informed, critical, and in-depth, with flashes of humor and whimsy thrown in. The vivid thread connecting these essays is the Navajo concept of a "sacred geography." Michael Engelhard has traveled and explored the Southwest for close to twenty years. His heartfelt rendering of this region straddles the fences normally separating natural history, ethnography, personal reflection, and travel narrative. These essays spring from a growing concern that the song of the land, the stories of these places, and the voices of their non-human and indigenous inhabitants might not be heard against the din of bulldozers, powerboats, turbines, and four-wheelers. Engelhard's passion and keen eye offer finely tuned observations, and his essays are small gestures of gratitude, of remembering what has been given to him.