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"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still." Whether she's reflecting on nature's teachings, divulging her experiences as a cowpuncher, or painting vivid word portraits of the people she lives and works with, Gretel Ehrlich's observations are lyrical and funny, wise and authentic. After moving from the city to a vast new state, she writes of adjusting to cowboy life, boundless open spaces, and the almost incomprehensible harshness of a Wyoming winter:
"When it's fifty below, the mercury bottoms out and jiggles there as if laughing at those of us still above ground. Once I caught myself on tiptoes, peering down into the thermometer as if there were an extension inside inscribed with higher and higher declarations of physical misery: ninety below to the power of ten and so on."
After experiencing the isolated life of a sheep herder, she writes, "Keenly observed the world is transformed. The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient."
Ehrlich's gift is one of subtle precision. She writes beauty into the plainest of thoughts and meaning into the simplest of ideas: "True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere." --Kathryn True
From Publishers Weekly
Like many before her, poet Gretel Ehrlich discovered the therapeutic qualities of the West. In 1976, a time of personal crisis, she moved from the East to a small farm in Wyoming where she ultimately found peace of mind and inspiration. Originally, she had gone west to make a film for PBS; she returned to work with neighbors at cattle- and sheep-ranching, taking pleasure in open spaces. Ehrlich writes with sensitivity and affection about people, the seasons and the landscape. Whether she is enjoying solitude or companionship, her writing evokes the romance and timelessness of the West. NovemberCopyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Many urbanites sojourn in the West to commune with nature in the wide-open spaces, but few have related their experiences, or so fully captured the essence of Wyoming, as well as this author. She was sent from New York to the Big Horn region in 1976 to make a film about sheepherders. To recover from the death of a loved one, she wandered near and far for two years before returning to northern Wyoming, where she finally found solace. The vivid descriptions of the physical aspects of her surroundings are more than balanced by her poetic commentaries on the nature of the sheepherders, cowpokes, and Native Americans who inhabit the area. This paean to Wyoming should find a place in all special collections on the West and would be a fine addition to general collections. Sondra Brunhumer, Western Mich. Univ. Libs., KalamazooCopyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
Gretel Ehrlich is the kind of writer who teaches you that prose can be poetry. In The Solace of Open Spaces she writes about coming to terms with the death of the man she loves, about her life in Wyoming, and about what it means to live in wide spaces and interact primarily with animals. Each of these essays is a piece unto itself; sentence after sentence can be savored like hard candy until every bit of flavor comes out. There is much to learn about Wyoming here; Gretel Ehrlich has a mind for details and the reader comes away fully educated about sheep herding, rodeos, cabin fever, and the value of water. But it is how Gretel Ehrlich writes as much as what she writes that makes her work exceptional. Her words soar and swoop and remind us that writing can always be more than just telling what happened: "The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding." -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
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