"Consider a subject in the hands of a gemcutter: any way you turn it, it will reflect light, depth, and a mysterious variegated understanding more comprehensive and more lasting than a single view can expect to illuminate. Stephen Trimble has assembled a marvelously faceted survey, as essential as boots on the trail, to exploring Capitol Reef National Park. Equal parts science, cultural anthropology (with its lessons in hope and hubris), history, eco-theology, and, if one counts the number of times the word "love" surfaces in these pages, part love letter, this volume leaves no stone unturned or topic in the card catalog unpopulated. But even while it is manifoldly knowledgeable, it also rather delightedly admits that much of the map is still blank, with unnamed windings and washes, chasms and canyons, and the multitude of shapes that stone can assume under the "creative impulse" of erosion--a reminder that this is not only a wilderness, but a changing one as well. From the sedimentary record of human occupation over time to the literal landscape with its "audacious geology," and finally, to the omnipresent and disconcerting beauty of Capitol Reef, this collection will stir the mind and excite the heart. You'll be grabbing your pack and boots before the last page settles and, like me, heading back to see all that I missed."
--Lynn Stegner, author of For All the Obvious Reasons