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, Ellen Meloy, and Craig Childs. Much more than one man's memoir of his time in these canyons, it is an eclectic, well-informed, critical, and in-depth collection punctuated by flashes of humor and whimsy. 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 portrayal 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 nonhuman and indigenous inhabitants might not be heard against the din of bulldozers, powerboats, turbines, and four-wheelers. Michael Engelhard is an avid outdoorsman and essayist with a particular interest in cultural ecology and the symbolic dimension of landscapes. He is the author of Redrock Almanac: Canyon Country Vignettes and the editor of Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.