The Light In High Places: A Naturalist Looks at Wyoming Wilderness--Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, Cowboys, and Other Rare Species

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Naturalist Joe Huttos latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyomings Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant and human needs can become a matter of life and deathto study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. The population of these rare alpine sheep is in decline. The lambs are dying in unprecedented numbers. Huttos job is to find out why.
For months at a time, he follows the bighorn herds, meets mountain lions and bears, weathers injury and storms, and beautifully observes the incredible splendor of the Rocky Mountains.
Hutto has a deep connection to Wyoming, having managed a large cattle ranch in his past. He weaves Wyomings history of the cowboy, mountain ecology, and the lives of the bighorn sheep into a beautiful flowing narrative. Ultimately, he discovers that the lambs are dying of a form of nutritional muscular dystrophy due to selenium deficiency, which is caused by acid raina grim ecological disaster caused by human pollution. Here is a new twist on a cautionary tale, and a new voice, eloquently ex-pressing the urgency that we mend our ways.

Reviews

A fine fresh gust of mountain air from the Wind Rivers and a wonderfulbook of elegies and celebrations of the beauty and resilience of wildnature, together with sketches of the dedicated few still fighting tooffset the poor stewardship and folly of our greedy species. A clear-eyed, insightful, stimulating, and lyrical book, very well-written throughout. --Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country and The Snow Leopard
A highly readable account of important research on bighorn sheep inWyoming, solving a longstanding puzzle about the decline of a once largesheep population. It is, however, more than that, as the author recountsvividly the difficulties of such field work as well as his emotionaltrials and tribulations being involved in work with painful ramifications.It is that which makes it superior to good science well told. Highlyrecommended! --Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Impossible to put down an intensely lived and well-researched potpourriof ecology, ethology, geology, anthropology. Joe Hutto s life intersectswith the decline of high Rocky Mountain ecosystems and of the cowboy culture thatoccupied them a struggle for personal fulfillment documenting a tragictransformation. --Daniel Simberloff, Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Tennessee; past president, American Society of Naturalists
Joe Hutto takes the art of being alone in the wild to new heights in themagnificently written The Light in High Places, a story of personal andecological discovery in one of North America s last great places. --M. Sanjayan, Lead Scientist, The Nature Conservancy
The Light in High Places extols the quiet pleasures of living simply andclose to nature in Wyoming s wilderness while the author observes bighornsheep or herds cows. In lucid and lyrical sentences, it chronicles theecological and cultural changes that affect this land and all our future. --George Schaller, leading field biologist, mammalogist, naturalist, conservationist and author
The Light in High Places is an exquisite adventure in the alpineterritory of Wyoming that few of us will ever get to see, and it is apowerful call to arms for all of us to gear up and treat our planet withcompassion. Hutto writes in the tradition of Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Barry Lopez, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Quite simply, this book is wonderful. --John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War
The Light in High Places is full of intelligence and passion, first-ratestorytelling, and, ultimately, transcendence. It is an instant classic abeautiful profile of a unique place on earth in an alarming and yetexhilarating moment in time. --Rick Bass, author of The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana
Impossible to put down-an intensely lived and well-researched potpourri of ecology, ethology, geology, anthropology. Joe Hutto's life intersects with the decline of high Rocky Mountain ecosystems and of the cowboy culture that occupied them-a struggle for personal fulfillment documenting a tragic transformation. -- Daniel Simberloff, Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Tennessee; pa

Author Bio

Joe Hutto: Joe Hutto is a biologist, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, and keen observer of animal behavior. His first book, Illumination in the Flatwoods, was a critically acclaimed story of his magical experience raising a brood of wild turkeys, which became an award-winning documentary called My Life as a Turkey. He lives in Lander, Wyoming.