This book is not only a tribute to, but a biography of, Lyle. At the center is Lyle, Galvin’s friend and mentor in this real world-carpenter, machinist, jeweler, logger, farmer, mechanic, inventor, whatever necessary.
The people are “mountain people,”highly self-sufficient, hardy, stoic, enduring not only in life but in the pages of this book. The Meadow is a mountain meadow, described in the first chapter, and is Galvin’s “real”world, inhabited by mosquitoes, bear, antelope, birds, beaver, elk, horses, some wonderful coyotes, and people. He knows, as didJeffers, to stay awayfrom the “molten mass thickening to empire,” for “there are left the mountains.” And he knows the mountains and the mountain people. When not teaching atIowa, he hies to the mountains, works on his cabin, brings the horses down from the high pasture, fixes fences, and does other necessary work. First, the language, tone, and images remind us thatJames Galvin is, first of all, one of the best contemporary “western” poets, having produced three superb books of poetry: Imaginary Timber, God’s Mistress, and Elements. 230 pages, $19.95.) The limitations of a short review make it impossible to explain why William Kittredge calls The Meadow “one of the best books ever written about the American West.”However, there are some things to say. So what started out to be a memorial tribute to the brave young firefighters ends up being a strangely self-absorbed book that never lets us get to know the men concerned (other than the surviving two) or lets us really sympathize with the grand old man telling the story.© by STARRJENKINS, 1993 Emeritus, CalPoly State University, San Luis Obispo The Meadow. Yet most of this story #1 is better told in fifty pages in Earl Cooley’s Trimotor and Trail (1984).
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ħ4 Western American Literature Maclean, and a young smokejumper foreman, Laird Robinson, do incisive detective work over a long period of time to slowly unravel the mystery of what exactly happened.
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