Leaning Into The Wind

Originally published in 1997 by Houghton Mifflin, this is a collection of true stories, essays and poems which tell of the glories and rigours of living close to the land.

"Leaning into the Wind is a series of ten intimate essays in which Susan Allen Toth, who was spent most of her life in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, reveals the ways in which weather has challenged and changed her perceptions about herself and the world around her. She describes her ever-growing awareness of and appreciation for how the weather marks the major milestones of her life. Toth explores issues as large as weather and spirituality in "Who Speaks in the Pillar of Cloud?" and topics as small as mosquito in "Things That Go Buzz in the Night." In "Storms," a severe thunderstorm becomes a continuing metaphor for the author's troubles first marriage. Two essays, one from late middle age, ponder how the weather seems different at various stages of life but always provides unexpected opportunities for self-discovery, change, and renewal."--BOOK JACKET.

A finalist for the 1995 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language non-fiction Winner of the Mountain Environment and Culture Award at the 1995 Banff Mountain Book Festival Leaning on the Wind is a love song of the west, sung to the tune of the wild chinook wind. Sid Marty skilfully weaves together the prehistory of Alberta with the experiences of First Nations, miners, early homesteaders and his own family. At the centre of his tale is the Marty homestead, located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Sid looks back through generations of his family and celebrates the feats of wild creatures and wild westerners. The past comes alive in these pages, but so does the present, where you will meet cowboy poets, bull riders, sailplane pilots, desperate chicken farmers, curmudgeonly broncos, a homicidal cow elk, some dubious politicians and several fierce defenders of the earth. Humour and sardonic wit abound, along with abundant affection for the western earth and the people who depend on its bounties and experience its extremes of wind, frost and drought. A western classic, Leaning on the Wind is as evocative today as when it was first published in 1995.

Sid Marty's extraordinary clarity of thought and language makes this ambitious book a pleasure to read. He combines native legends, pioneer tales, cowboy myths, and wildlife stories to paint an engaging portrait of his home in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, near Pincher Creek, Alberta. There is a rich store of history here - geological, human, and personal - and fascinating glimpses of individual lives. Marty has the rare ability to draw universal insight from his personal experience and observation. A delight.

« Andy Goldsworthy est un artiste mondialement reconnu pour son travail éphémère et permanent avec la nature, le LAND ART. Il y a 16 ans, de sa rencontre avec le réalisateur Thomas Riedelsheimer est né le succès mondial Rivers and tides. Entre 2013 et 2016, les deux hommes sont repartis à l'aventure. On découvre comment Andy Goldsworthy s'introduit lui même dans ses œuvres, comment son travail devient à la fois plus fragile et plus personnel, plus sévère et plus difficile, incorporant des machineries massives et des équipes importantes sur de plus gros projets. Ce film est un voyage créatif qui nous mène d'Edimbourg à la réserve d'Ibitipoca au Brésil, du sud de la France à la Nouvelle-Angleterre.»

Includes an interview with the artist by Tina Fiske.

For forty years, Andy Goldsworthy has worked with an extraordinary range of natural materials, often at their source. On an almost daily basis, he makes works of art using the materials and conditions that he encounters wherever he is, be it the land around his Scottish home, the mountain regions of France or Spain, or the pavements of New York City, Glasgow, or Rio de Janeiro. Out of earth, rocks, leaves, ice, snow, rain, sunlight and shadow he makes artworks that exist briefly before they are altered and erased by natural processes. They are documented in his photographs, and their larger meanings are bound up with the conditions, forces and processes that they embody: materiality, temporality, growth, vitality, permanence, decay, chance, labour and memory. Ephemeral Works features approximately two hundred of these works, selected by Goldsworthy from thousands he has made between 2001 and the present, and arranged in chronological sequence, capturing his creative process as it interacts with material, place, and the passage of time and seasons.

Time, always an element in the work of Andy Goldsworthy, both as a medium and as a metaphor, is celebrated in this book. The text is comprised of Goldsworthy's own diaries.