
The Quiet Mountains
A Ten-Year Search for the Last Wild Trout of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental
Rex Johnson(Author)
University of New Mexico Press
Published on 1. July 2005
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-0-8263-2273-9 (ISBN)
Description
Readers who believe as Herman Melville's Ishmael, that 'meditation and water are wedded for ever', will be entranced by Rex Johnson Jr's, account of his travels to the upper Bavispe River in Mexico's northern Sierra Madre. Combining travel observations, natural history, ethnography, ecology, and ichthyology, Johnson's narrative plunges the reader into a world that is so far from the twenty-first-century United States that it is difficult to believe how physically close the two countries actually are. Johnson goes in search of an ancient species of trout, the Bavispe, at least 3 million years old. It has been easier for the Bavispe to remain unchanged for millennia than for the human inhabitants of the Sierra Madre to endure for mere centuries. Johnson notes the area's Indian descendants are in the process of becoming modern, and the needs of the ancient trout, dependent on pure, unpolluted water, collide at times with the choices of people scratching out an existence in a challenging environment. The parallel stories from natural and human history are a central theme in Johnson's account of environmental change and its consequences, layered with the personal, contemplative meaning he finds in the quest for the seldom-seen fish.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Albuquerque, NM
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
16 colour plates and 40 duotones
Dimensions
Height: 223 mm
Width: 262 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
1184 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8263-2273-9 (9780826322739)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Rex Johnson Jr; Photographs by David Burckhalter
Content
July 1996: Crossing; The Trout of Mexico; May 1988: Looking South; March 1999: Roundtail Chubs in the Sierra San Luis; May 1999: Pentecost; October 1999: The Gavilan Box; July 2000: A Bad Year; August 2001: The Ridge; November 2001: Guarding the Fish Hatchery; March 2002: Digging and Plowing; May 2002: The Horse Race; August 2002: All the Way to Chuichupa; July 1996: The Sea Change; Index.