Leaning on the Wind: Under the Spell of the Great Chinook

Leaning on the Wind is a biography of the eccentric Marty clan and their homestead on Alberta's prairie below the eastern front of the Canadian Rockies. While a family history, it is equally an ecological treatise and a paean to the beauty and wonder of nature. Marty is a gifted writer who captures the heart and brings it home to revel in his mountains. Alternately comic, tragic, and inspiring, one readily feels a member of his family and the unconventional lives they lead. Like all eco-centric books, there is a fair share of ideology tossed about, but, unlike others, Marty takes the complete political spectrum to task. His is no Leftist caterwaul that bleeds well beyond the issue of environmentalism, but an objective exposition on the ecological ills that all forms of government bring. From page one, I swept through this book in just a couple of sittings. It is a model of it's genre full of optimism, success, failure, and melancholy, but ultimately, of love: Sid Marty's love for his people and their place amidst Alberta's rustic natural majesty. I recommend it highly. 5 stars.

I've just discovered the books of Sid Marty this year and I'm finding anything written by this gifted author is simply astonishing. What a rare combination-- what we have here is a park ranger with an extraordinary insight into human behavior who also has an ability to record his reflections with uncommon talent. Leaning on the Wind is spellbinding. I could not put it down.

From the warmth of your bedroom to the clarity of a foothill on a February morning, Leaning on the Wind takes you to places you didn't think existed. Like going on a trip with a serene uncle and reading his life like a carpet slowly unrolling in front of you. You are there with him and above it looking at his memories. This novel is neither myth and only cousin to fact; it is a folk story of the every day. In the middle east, Persian weavers insert a flaw in the pattern of their rugs, because only God is perfect. Marty, too, puts some extra stitches in his weaving and occasionally waxes tedious in his comment on the every day. But every insight requires a little bit of time and energy. It is a picture of both the beauty and sorrow in Canada.