The Solace of Open Spaces

Gretel Erlich was a poet and filmmaker when she first came to Wyoming in 1976. She was so taken with everything about the place that she became a cowherd, which gave her time to write about the American West. Reading her books, however, is very much like seeing a film, for her filmmaker's eye and awareness of nuance and gesture is evident in the way she chooses her words.In The Solace of Open Spaces, Erlich presents us with an eclectic bunch of frontier characters that she met while working as a ranch hand. Almost unaware of what's been accomplished, we readers find ourselves shedding former stereotypes of these people in exchange for seeing them for what they are: unique, quirky, interesting, inexplicable men and women. The Weather (and the word deserves that capital letter, as you'll see upon reading the book) plays as large a role as the people in Ehrlich's book.About the title: When she arrived in Wyoming, Erlich was grieving the death of someone important to her. As she works hard at physical labor, meets new people, falls in love with the land, and sheds her past like sweat running down her back, healing from grief occurs - although she doesn't exactly say this.Altogether, a beautiful book and a wonderful read.

In these essays about Wyoming, the imagery of mountain and plain and weather calls to mind the sweeping landscapes of John Ford movies. Ehrlich, born and raised in California, retains her outsider's eye for detail, and is able to translate the perspective of someone trained in documentary filmmaking very effectively into the medium of words. Her portrayal of the men who work in this environment is very different from the stereotypes we know from Marlboro ads, "Bonanza," and movie westerns. She finds cowboys often tender-hearted, quirky, and curiously courtly. Not to be outdone by the men in this world of extremes and hard work, the women she meets and befriends are tough-minded and independent. Completing her picture are the Native Americans, whom she portrays respectfully and with an ironic appreciation for incongruity, as they both recover and reinvent a lost heritage. Hers is also a personal story. Beginning with the wrenching death of a close male friend, it recounts in her growing love for Wyoming and its people the discovery of a new life. And while her book is no heart-on-the-sleeve display of pain and recovery, one senses at almost every step the healing process that underlies the words. As slender as a book of poems, this volume of essays calls out to be read slowly and savored, word for word.

Erlich brings Wyoming to life in powerful, luminous, unvarnished prose. She conjurs a rich world of survival beyond the pampered Jackson Hole Tetons. Quiet and powerful, a beautiful work of natural and self exploration.

I first learned of this book from a wizened sheep rancher and shearer discussed in one of Ehrlich's vignettes, and expected a trite outsider's view of this area. (I live not too many miles from where she lived during most of the book). As I feasted on the author's prose, though, I was thrilled to find that I was wrong.This is a spirited, moving, and perceptive portrait of a land that can be both hostile and nurturing, and those people who have become a part of the country. The author relates her responses to the land, tying these reactions to emotional transformations she experienced as she learned the territory and its ways.Yes, the book is good as a travelogue. However, it really excels in its analysis of a land and its people. Ehrlich's book both confirmed and sharpened the impressions I had developed as I learned about my new home. Wherever you live, this is an excellent book for you to read.