{"product_id":"the-anthropology-of-turquoise-meditations-on-landscape-art-and-spirit-9780375408854","title":"The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape  Art  and Spirit","description":"\u003cp\u003eOf all the things I wondered about on this land  I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like homenot by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world  how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.  Ellen Meloy  Neurobiologists say that our sensitivity to color begins when we are infants. For artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy  who has spent most of her life in wild  remote places  an intoxication with light and colorsometimes subliminal  often fiercehas expressed itself as a profound attachment to landscape. It has been rightly said: Color is the first principle of Place.  In this luminous mix of memoir  natural history  and eccentric adventure  Meloy uses turquoisethe color and the gemas a metaphor for a way to make sense of the world from the clues of nature. From the Sierra Nevada  the Mojave Desert  the Yucatan Peninsula  and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and in the deep canyons of the Southwest  we journey with Meloy through diverse habitats of supersensual light  through places of beauty and places of desecration. With keen vision and sharp wit she introduces us to deserts  canyons  turquoise seas  and ancestral mountains  as well as to comedian plants  psychiatrist mules  and Persians who consider turquoise the equivalent of a bulletproof vest. Meloy describes women held to the desert by sheer gravity  and she mourns the passing of her oldest neighbors  the Navajo velvet grandmothers whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland. There is a swim across the Mojave  a harrowing error on a solo trip down a wild river  and a birthday party with wild sheep.  Throughout  Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the environments  creatures  and objects that celebrate what we often take for granted: our own spirits  the eternity of all things.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647973187637,"sku":"ByrdShop_0375408851","price":34.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375408854.jpg?v=1781700226","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-anthropology-of-turquoise-meditations-on-landscape-art-and-spirit-9780375408854","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}