Leaning on the Wind: Under the Spell of the Great Chinook Book

Nominated for the 1995 Governor General's Award for Nonfiction. Winner of a 1995 Banff Mountain Book Festival Award. "Most of our land is in the sky," writes Sid Marty of his southwestern Alberta home. Between sky and prairie blows the Chinook, a powerful, warm wind that can carry away the precious topsoil as easily as it turns winter temporarily into spring. For Marty, Chinook is the spirit of the West, the brash voice of western history and cowboy culture; the trickster lurking at the homesteader's fence. Leaning on the Wind is Sid Marty's testament to Chinook Country life and his appeal for balance between the ways of nature and the demands of the modern world. Leaning on the Wind is a grand blast of writing, a poetic search for the spirit of the land in the foothills of Alberta. Wryly humorous, observant and imaginative, Sid Marty offers us a personal and richly entertaining portrait of the wild and not-so-wild west - and makes a plea for the preservation of a powerful place and spirit.Read More