Using imagery and metaphor of owls, this book charts a trajectory or journey out west. It's in some ways diaristic, but also smart and observant. There's a lot of masculine energy in the book, and I wish more female thinkers were cited, but Ehrenreich is smart, and a pleasure to spend time with.

I thought this was going to be a much different book than it turned out to be. First, I grew up in the Mojave Desert, I would hike and also learned about the plants and the wildlife the life there. Yes, there is change, change everywhere. In the early part of the sixties when my father I would explore there was a place outside of our town that was a fossil bed. It literally had fossils on top of the soil you could see the past. Did people in the desert take these no. once found out by people from out of town they would come and take them, no different than a volcano that we used to explore but by the nineties when I wanted to take my children there it was fenced off, don’t know why but it was. People talk about the desert which I love the beauty of it, instead, the author was talking about the destruction of our planet, which we did to ourselves, we continue to homes while tearing down forests so people can live in the mountains. We allow corporations to sit with vacant buildings with hundreds of yards of asphalt around not forcing them to do anything about it, yet okaying a new building to be built somewhere else yet it is cars that are doing the damage. No one speaks of the destruction of the rain forest and the fire that is going on in Brazil which is destroying more of a rain forest than the Amazon. Yet for all of this if you pass a few regulations by the government you can build anywhere even in the desert. Nothing is going to change whether I get on my soapbox or this author, for the beauty of the desert is just that with the person. I see life, when people drive from L.A. to Vegas, they just see a destination not that if you get stuck what cactus has water for you to survive that is the beauty of the desert and it is still there. Thanks for my rant sorry. I was hoping for more from this book.

I enjoyed the author's ruminations upon his hikes in the desert in Joshua Tree National Park and how he brought in mythologies from many different traditions to reflect about the changing climate and the meaning of time. The author brought in so many different ideas that I sometimes wasn't sure where he was going with them. I will have to reread parts of this book. I would recommend this book to those who love the natural world.

Fascinating detours down dark alleys of thought, reflection and digressions on mankind and nature, but ultimately could not hold my attention. The threads of these layered essays, though fun and enlightening, meandered to far afield to support a central theme. Woven into the narrative is a consistent return to the "rhino," an open criticism of the current presidential officeholder's inept disregard for science and compassionate action. I did enjoy many individual riffs, but I feel the author did not take me in any one direction.