The solitude in which westerners live makes them quiet...Sentence structure is shortened. Descriptive words are dropped, even verbs...What’s behind this laconic style is shyness. There is no vocabulary for the subject of feelings. It’s not a hangdog shyness, or anything coy— always there’s a robust spirit in evidence behind the restraint...The silence is profound. Instead of talking, we seem to share one eye. 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.

In her first essay, she writes of John, a sheep man who put her to work—extended hours of it, which she says woke her up: Il Wyoming è la terra della salvia, scrive Greta Ehrilch, e io non lo immaginavo, ma anche del vento, della neve, del freddo che ti si insinua nelle ossa e ti anestetizza la mente, e qui è rispondente al mio immaginario. In Greenland there is no ownership of land. What you own is your house, your dogs, your sleds and kayaks. Everyone is fed. It is a food-sharing society in which the whole population is kept in mind--the widows, elderly, infirm, and ill are always taken care of. Jens said, "We weren't born to buy and sell, but to be out on the ice with our families.” The mind swims laps, memory is cantilevered over genetic turmoil, and the writing goes on as if from unseen instruction, silencing, cleaving, and destabilizing words and thoughts, while the “hum” in me, the human, pushes fragments into the semblance of story.”

The arid country was a clean slate. Its absolute indifference steadied me...Because ranch work is a physical, and these days, economic strain, being ‘at home on the range’ is a matter of vigor, self-reliance, and common sense. A person’s life is not a series of dramatic events for which he or she is applauded or exiled but a slow accumulation of days, seasons, years, fleshed out by the generational weight of one’s family and anchored by a land-bound sense of place. After five years, Ehrlich leaves Wyoming to travel and pursue new projects. However, she keeps returning, and when she marries, she and her husband set up home in Shell, Wyoming. They run their own ranch, and Ehrlich helps out on her neighbors’ ranches whenever necessary. La caratteristica principale del paesaggio è quella che un imprenditore edile eufemisticamente descriverebbe come «robaccia indigena fin sotto la porta di casa», ossia un misto di assetati arbusti di pianta del sale, serpenti, lepri dalla coda nera, mosche dei cervi, polvere rossa ,ciuffi di fiori selvatici, greti di fiume e totale assenza di alberi. Se sulle Grandi Pianure il panorama è una sinfonia, un inno suonato dall’erba, il Wyoming sembra piuttosto scaturito dal delirio di un architetto: un gran ruzzolare e acciottolare di pietra infusa di colori tenui, esangui, un gigante di roccia che un rumore improvviso abba strappato un sonno profondo e gettato in piena luce.» She explains all this, and tells us about men, something other than the romanticized Marlboro man version: “If he’s ‘strong and silent’ it’s because there’s probably no one to talk to.” There is an effect of “geographical vastness,” on “emotional evolution” but also a “true vulnerability in evidence...” I liked Islands, the Universe, Home and expected to like The Solace of Open Spaces just as much. Unfortunately that was not the case. It might be a matter of poor timing, but I found Ehrlich's words in this slim collection of essays frustrating in a way I didn't feel with the other one. Maybe revisiting the open planes of Wyoming just isn't what I needed right now. It left me feeling cold. I am cold.

Ehrlich's best prose belongs in a league with Annie Dillard and even Thoreau. The Solace of Open Spaces releases the bracing air of the wilderness into the stuffy, heated confines of winter in civilization." — San Francisco Chronicle Born in 1946 in Santa Barbara, California, [2] she studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She began to write full-time in 1978 while living on a Wyoming ranch after the death of a loved one. Ehrlich debuted in 1985 with The Solace of Open Spaces, a collection of essays on rural life in Wyoming. Her first novel was also set in Wyoming, entitled Heart Mountain (1988), about a community being invaded by an internment camp for Japanese Americans. The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.”Ehrlich’s best prose belongs in a league with Annie Dillard and even Thoreau. The Solace of Open Spaces releases the bracing air of the wilderness into the stuffy, heated confines of winter in civilisation.’ – San Francisco Chronicle Author papers (1960-2018) at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University I recently discovered Gretel Ehrlich, not that she isn’t well known by others. The discovery merely reflects my ignorance...and yet, I get great joy from finding new food—someone whose words I immediately want to absorb. I found the book in a used book store. The title alone intrigued me—one who thinks that soul nurturing places, solitude and silence are the final luxuries. And her essays are about Wyoming, my neighbor state and our least populated one—to me, a feature, not a bug. Also, two of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard and Edward Abbey, who I’ve re-read multiple times, gave her high praise. I expect to read more of Ehrlich. Ranchers are midwives, hunters, nurturers, providers, and conservationists all at once. What we’ve interpreted as toughness—weathered skin, calloused hands, a squint in the eye and a growl in the voice—only masks the tenderness inside.” urn:oclc:696019657 Republisher_date 20120221183130 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120220153038 Scanner scribe18.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source

urn:lcp:solaceofopenspac00ehrl:epub:e01d8cad-7642-49bd-875a-3d4f73295331 Extramarc MIT Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier solaceofopenspac00ehrl Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2c83c46w Isbn 9780140081138 A sense of panic ensued, but panic is like fresh air. The world falls out from under us and we fly, we float, we skim mountains, and every draught we breathe is new. Exposed and raw, we are free to be lost , to ask questions. Otherwise we seize up and are paralyzed by self-righteousness, obsessed with our own perfection. If there is no death and regeneration, our virtues become empty shells” (199)-- Ehrlich's _A Match to the Heart_.” What's required of him is an odd mixture of physical vigor and maternalism. His part of the beef-raising industry is to birth andLater, she quotes someone but can’t remember who, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences.” Yep, “absolute indifference.” And even later, “There is nothing in nature that can’t be taken as a sign of both mortality an invigoration...Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are....” Those asking, “What do you do?” then later responding “Don’t you get bored?” made me smile. There are those of us who never get bored left alone out in nature.