Broken Country: Mountains & Memory

by C.L. Rawlins

Book Overview

The author of the highly praised Sky's Witness returns to the Salt River Range of his youth. To be found, C.L. Rawlins writes, you must be lost, or lose yourself. . . . To be whole, you must know you can be broken. Thus begins his life-altering journey over the mountains. Broken Country is a work of power and understanding, and Rawlins a poet who reminds us that understanding is rarely kind.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805037187
• ISBN13: 9780805037180
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 279 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Broken Country

I bought this after reading Sky's Witness. I'd say Sky's Witness, which I highly recommend, is the better of the two even though it was written earlier. Broken Country deals with an earlier period in the author's life, and while it captures that youthful angst well, it tries to be more than it really is. It is a kind of stream of consciousness tale of a summer at a painful time in the author's life. It touches on a lot of significant topics, but doesn't go anywhere with some of them. In my opinion, the book would have been better if the author had taken the considerable literary skills and knowledge evident in Sky's Witness and used them to comment on that period of his life rather than trying to present it as he remembered it. Having said this, I enjoyed the book and don't want to give the impression that it wasn't worth the time to read. If you like Wyoming mountains, you will enjoy reading it.

Chief cook and horse wrangler: a summer memoir

If spending two summer months in the western mountains of Wyoming herding sheep sounds like your idea of fun, think again. C. L. Rawlins' day-by-day reminiscences based on a journal he kept in 1973 as cook and horse wrangler for a sheepherder makes no bones about it -- the scenery may be breathtaking, but the work is mostly back breaking and sometimes dangerous. Rawlins, in his early 20s, takes the job as a kind of escape from several personal struggles, including an ambivalence about the war in Vietnam, which has caused a rift with his family. There's also a romance that's gone somewhat haywire.But almost immediately, the mountains, still under snow in mid-July at the high passes, and the demanding work envelope him in a physical world where his only human companion is a pony-tailed sheepherder, Mitch, not much older than himself. There is wind, rain, sun, hail, more rain, heat, frost, and then snow again before the short summer is over. There are bear, coyotes, hawks and other wildlife. There are walks by moonlight, and reading Homer by candlelight. There's the round of meals to be prepared: bacon, beans, chili, tortillas, currant muffins, rhubarb pie. They meet a team of Basque herders. Driving in on old logging roads, Rawlins' brother visits until they get on each other nerves. Then his girlfriend visits, and after their heated lovemaking tells him she's seeing someone else. Through it all, the author recounts the emotional ups and downs of a young man unsure of his place in the world, but sure of one thing -- that he has a deep fascination for this "broken country" of mountain ranges, rocky ridges, wildflowers, streams, and meadows. Much of his book is rich with detailed descriptions of carefully observed landscapes. I felt when I finished the book that I had been on a long journey away from civilization.Writing 20 years later, Rawlins preserves the point of view of his younger self, complete with the youthful excesses that express his angst and exuberance, often told in short personal poems. I recommend this book to anyone interested in nature writing, the mountain West, ranching, and roughing it in the outdoors. Definitely worth adding to a Western nonfiction bookshelf.