I love this cover because of the sunlight on the cholla
The Turquoise Ledge
By Leslie Marmon Silko
Profound reflections on family and the natural world-from the legendary Native American author. Silko combines memoir with family history and observations on the creatures and desert landscapes that command her attention and inform her vision of the world. Ambitious in scope and full of wonderfully plainspoken and evocative lyricism, The Turquoise Ledge is both an exploration of Silko's experience and a moving and deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world.
I bought this book several years ago with the intention of reading it in the summer. That didn't happen. It sat on my shelves for four years until I finally decided to pick it up this summer. Why did I intend to read it in summer you may ask? Because I live in the Sonoran Desert as well(though I'm outside Phoenix) and each summer, it's so hot that despite having chosen to move here 20 years ago, I wonder why the hell I live here. I remember again in winter. I figured this book would help me appreciate the desert a little more in the stifling heat of summer in the desert. I was right.
This memoir is told in a meandering way that echoes the author's walks through the mountains where she lives. It was different, but it fit. Along the way, you learn a bit about her family and growing up in a pueblo in New Mexico, the spiritual beings that call to Leslie as they did her ancestors, and you learn a bit about the Tucson Mountains and the plants and animals there.
While reading, I discovered a weird personal connection I wasn't expecting. The author's paternal grandmother was born in Los Lunas, New Mexico and was Mexican, German, English, and Texas Indian. My great-grandmother, my mom's paternal grandmother was also born in Los Lunas, New Mexico to German parents. I had never seen a reference to Los Lunas in a book before. When I told my aunt, she wondered how many other German immigrants made their way to the desert in New Mexico. The author is around my mom's age, so I figured that her grandmother and my great-grandmother were contemporaries. That made me wonder if they new each other, even in passing.
I appreciated the author's writing style and enjoyed the historical facts that she peppered through the book, along with the spirituality. For instance: Water is a necessary component of the formation of turquoise -- no wonder indigenous people of the deserts connected turquoise with water and rain -- it wasn't just the color of blue and green --turquoise meant water had been there." and " The Hopi farmers copied the tight coil of the rattlers to make their garden plots. They made deep circular depressions in the garden soil that were designed to catch and hold rainwater for the seeds planted in the center just the way rattlers caught rain in their coils."
I also greatly appreciated this passage: "As the thirty-seventh day of the heat wave dawned, a voice in my head said 'Tell me again - why exactly do I live here?'" Oh how I relate to that!
Rain is a magical, spiritual occurrence in the desert. Last year, we barely had any rain at all and had a summer full of record-breaking temperatures. Summer of 2020 was the hottest summer on record in and around Phoenix and it was followed by the hottest autumn ever. Thankfully this year, we've had much more rain. Yesterday was my birthday and I was woken up at about 6am by the sound of pouring rain - a wonderful birthday present. A few weeks ago, we had four days of rain and actually were able to turn the air conditioner off and open the windows - in the 20 years I've lived here, we've never been able to do that in July. We had more rain in a 24 hour period than we did the entirety of monsoon season last year.
All of this was to say I appreciated the way Leslie Marmon Silko writes about rain. It's lyrical.
"Now the clouds look like bundles of long silver tail feathers from a great silver blue macaw that gracefully curl down to meet Earth, dissolving into mists of silver over dark blue violet."
"Delicate threads of rain swirl into thick white draperies that fold across the dark hills." "Giant vertical clouds behind the Black Mountains take on the form of revenant warriors descending to Earth in swirling fog and mist..."
Another unexpected occurrence that came from reading this book: I was able to figure out what kind of birds I've been seeing at our hummingbird feeder. It definitely wasn't a hummingbird and it wasn't one of the doves that are around our apartment building. There was a passage where the author talked about the Gila Woodpeckers with their red head and black and white striped wings feeding from her feeders and it clicked. I looked up pictures and realized that's the bird! The next day, my husband changed the sugar water in the feeder. While I was reading, both of my cats started chittering and I looked out the window to see a Gila Woodpecker out here. He had a bit of red on his head and the stripes on his wings. Finally I knew what kind of bird it was! That was our excitement for the day.
I felt such a connection to this book and I'm so glad I read it. It definitely made me appreciate the Sonoran Desert a little more and made me realize I do have a connection to her. She may not be green and lush looking most of the time, but she has her own beauty and spirituality that those who open their eyes and truly observe can see.
About the Author:
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, now known as the "Genius Grant", in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.