The Solace of Open Spaces

With a new introduction by Amy Liptrot ‘True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere.’ In 1976 Ehrlich travelled from her home in New York to Wyoming to shoot a film on sheep herders. While she was there, her partner David died. What started out as a work trip became the beginning of a new life, and a long and deep attachment to place. Writing of sheep herding alone across Wyoming badlands, being struck by lightning, the true meaning of cowboys, and taking her new husband to the rodeo for their honeymoon, as well as the changing seasons, extreme winters and the wind, Ehrlich draws us into her personal relationship with this ‘planet of Wyoming’ she has come to call home. In The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich captures the incredible beauty and demanding harshness of natural forces in these remote reaches of the West, and the depth, tenderness and humour of the quirky souls who live there. Gretel Ehrlich is the author of This Cold Heaven, The Future of Ice, Heart Mountain, Facing the Wave, and The Solace of Open Spaces, among other works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Ehrlich studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She lives in Wyoming. ‘Vivid, tough, and funny. Wyoming has found its Whitman.’ – Annie Dillard ‘Ehrlich’s best prose belongs in a league with Annie Dillard and even Thoreau. The Solace of Open Spaces releases the bracing air of the wilderness into the stuffy, heated confines of winter in civilisation.’ – San Francisco Chronicle ‘A stunning rumination on life on Wyoming’s high plains . . . Ehrlich’s gorgeous prose is as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning.’– Newsday