In this invigorating mix of memoir, natural habitat, and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise – the colour and the gem – to illuminate our profound human attachment to landscape. From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even swimming pools.

“I thought I would never survive my own imagination.”

Ellen Meloy “The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky”. First published in 2002. This edition published by Vintage Books in 2019. I buy it myself for the library on my 38th birthday ❤️

Photos by Anna Iltnere / Sea Library