Description
Noted writer and photographer Stephen Trimble mixes eloquent accounts of personal experiences with clear explication of natural history. His photographs capture some of the most spectacular but least-known scenery in the western states. The Great Basin Desert sweeps from the Sierra to the Rockies, from the Snake River Plain to the Mojave Desert. "Biogeography" would be one way to sum up Trimble's focus on the land: what lives where, and why. He introduces concepts of desert ecology and discusses living communities of animals and plants that band Great Basin mountains—from the exhilarating emptiness of dry lake-beds to alpine regions at the summits of the 13,000-foot Basin ranges. This is the best general introduction to the ecology and spirit of the Great Basin, a place where "the desert almost seems to mirror the sky in size," where mountains hold "ravens, bristlecone pines, winter stillness—and unseen, but satisfying, the possibility of bighorn sheep." Trimble's photographs come from the backcountry of this rugged land, from months of exploring and hiking the Great Basin wilderness in all seasons; and his well-chosen words come from a rare intimacy with the West.

Reviews
"The Sagebrush Ocean is one beauty of a book, a triumph of regional literature of the kind we need, to relate more closely to his land of ours." —Harold Gilliam, The San Francisco Chronicle

"The Sagebrush Ocean will be a revelation to those who have habitually steeled themselves to drive across the desert at seventy miles an hour, generally at night. They have been missing something fabulous. . . . It ought to be in the pack of every desert camper and every off-road recreationist, just to teach them respect for what they use so freely. It ought to be on the seat of every car that starts across from Salt Lake to Reno, or vice versa, to give even seventy-mile-an-hour travelers some notion of what that apparently monotonous sagebrush ocean contains of the diversity and mystery of life." —Wallace Stegner

“This seemingly harsh, but actually beautiful—and fragile—landscape cannot even be seen, much less appreciated, at seventy miles per hour. You have to dismount your Ford and investigate it on foot. If you cannot do so, Trimble’s survey is the next best thing. His writing style is first-person informal (almost conversational), but informed. . . . The Sagebrush Ocean is so well done that it will probably become at least a minor classic of Western nature writing.” —Richard Dillon, True West, July 1990

“Books as well written, well researched, and nicely photographed as this one are a rare commodity in the expanding literary genre of Western natural history. This is, after all, a most varied field, ranging as it does from books that are essentially literary to those compiled by scientists endeavoring to popularize, and including

Contents
"The Great Basin is one of the least novelized, least painted, least eulogized of American landscapes. Stephen Trimble has opened it up with the perception of a frontier scout, but for a different set of people this time: people more eager to know than to possess, more eager to understand than utilize."—Barry Lopez, from the foreword