Product Description

Mari Grana begins her account of an adventure that grew out of her desire to withdraw to the wild and that ends with a sense of homecoming and community: "I saw over a rise in a meadow a little stone cabin far in the distance. The landscape of the canyon, the rocky pine-covered ridges, the long wide meadow with the escarpment of Rowe Mesa rising in the background, suddenly became the place I had dreamed about."

Once she had purchased the abandoned sheepherder's cabin on 240 remote acres of land in northern New Mexico, Grana began the work of making the cabin livable. With the help of local villagers, she plastered the mud walls, installed a cook-stove, and cleaned the rats out of her storehouse. She began to meet her neighbors and to learn the human history of the area. As she became familiar with the beauty, drama, and danger of the natural environment, she also learned about legendary local criminals and ancient land swindles. Writing out of her direct experience of this landscape and culture, Grana vividly describes a world where the village church comes alive on saints' days and the spirit of Begoso Cabin's builder, Natividad Ortiz, lingers still.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1971774 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 167 pages

Review
""Begoso Cabin" is a simple yet compelling account . . . greatly enlivened by visits with her neighbors, local history and the celebration of fiestas. . . . "Begoso Cabin" shows, that 'more' is an adventure with a spiritual component. . . . The record she writes is a lovely one, of a particular time and place in New Mexico."

From the Publisher
A UNM Press Paperback Original

About the Author
Mari Grana divides her time between Santa Fe and Begoso Cabin.

Customer Reviews

Begoso Cabin warms the heart & piques the adventurous spirit
Begoso Cabin is the account of a woman's experiences living in a remote canyon in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The author has described the land, the animals, the people in vivid detail. The book is replete with pleasing morsels of historical research beginning with the Pecos Indians who once hunted the area, the region's importance as the entry into Mexican territory on the Santa Fe Trail, the takeover of the Southwest by the United States, the legal hassles over the old Spanish land grant on which the Begoso cabin is located, to today's village customs and economy. Begoso Cabin partakes of a genre of women's writing that is characterized by such authors as Annie Dillard, Dorothy Gilman, Gretel Ehrlach and others who have retreated to the wilds to write their stories. Begoso Cabin is a good read, full of historical, and often humorous, anecdotes, sensitve landscape description, and sociological commentary on village life rendered in a vibrant and poetic prose.