Author Topic: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich  (Read 2062 times)

LibrarIan

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The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
« on: March 31, 2015, 02:41:03 PM »
I visited Wyoming for the first time this year and was taken aback by the beauty of the state. While there, someone recommended that I read Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces. The book was written through the late 1970s and early 1980s, but Ehrlich's work holds up very well. She is a wordsmith and has some beautiful insights into the consumerist American way of life, as well as profound introspective prose and descriptions of living like a badass in the wilderness. I highly, highly recommend the book. I got it through my public library's inter-library loan service. Just take in this passage:

Quote
We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough. We have a cultural tendency toward denial, but, being affluent, we strangle ourselves with what we can buy. We have only to look at the houses we build to see how we build against space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill up space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there.

Great stuff.

sheepstache

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Re: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2015, 02:59:41 PM »
Reminds me of a snarkier quote from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

"All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be."

fartface

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Re: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2015, 03:41:34 PM »
Thanks for sharing...that was a powerful quote - grounded in truth -- even more applicable to 2015!

PurposelyVague

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Re: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2015, 09:26:59 PM »
Thanks! I added it to my to-read list.

Lian

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Re: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2015, 10:18:40 PM »
I've added it to my reading list! I spent a lot of time in remote areas of Wyoming in a past job - I miss it, and need to go back.

 

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