A Wondrous Walk Through the Wild West

THE NEARBY FARAWAY: A Personal Journey Through the Heart of the West by David Petersen (Johnson, $15 paperback).

Sitting at the airport, I almost missed my flight. The accustomed bustle had vanished, the terminal had melted away and it was quiet. All the people were gone, and there were only two of us now. David Petersen was leading the way to a dry, musk-smelling elk’s lair in the Colorado Rockies, and we waited out a rainstorm while turning over the question: Do animals think? Then he was in Arizona, and we were sweating up a mystical peak, alive with birds and steeped in Indian lore, and we set sight for a breezy saddle on the ridge where we would pitch our tents if we ever, huff, got there. And I was thirsty.

He led me down into mysterious slick rock washes in Utah, and up the cloud-mist trails of the North Cascades. We were fly-fishing with novelist John Nichols in New Mexico, and then we were out on the Colorado plains sipping some Irish dew and watching the pronghorns and rationalizing how we were enjoying things more now that the years were slowing us down and . . .

Now boarding all rows . . .

Not since Ed Abbey has someone written about the Western outdoors so sweetly and with such intimacy.

As happens, David Petersen was a friend of Abbey and edited Abbey’s journals for publication. Surely the association inspired Petersen, just as Abbey inspired scores of writers and nature lovers. None, though, have put their voices to traveling through the Western outdoors with any finer reward.

Those of you who have camped on a stream know the wonderful taste of Cheddar cheese when mixed with the smell of exertion and pine needles. That’s how it tastes in your mouth as you read. Maybe you haven’t heard the bugle sound of a rutting bull elk. But you will here. And when you actually do hear it someday, it will be familiar. Until then, you will walk a little lighter so you don’t snap a twig and alarm those two fat, chocolate-colored bear cubs who are grazing in the aspen grove you just entered.

REGGAE: The Definitive Guide to Jamaican Music, From Ska Through Roots to Ragga by Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton (Rough Guide, $19.95 paperback illustrated).

Publishers continue to expand their definitions of travel writing. The logic is provident because travel is more than motion, or should be.

“Reggae,” is a fine example of the advancing frontier of guidebooks. It enriches our sense of place with an understanding of its most popular cultural export: that blend of folk, work, church and R&B; music that emerged in 1950s and 1960s Jamaica to become one of the world’s most distinctive and spirited beats.

Whether you are bound for the Caribbean or just back from listening to a neighbor’s stereo; whether you only vaguely know of Bob Marley or have all of Gregory Isaacs on vinyl, this encyclopedic guide gives you the who, what, when, where and how. Everything but the “why.” For that, you’ll have to listen.

Quick trips:

CORAL REEF FISHES: Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean, Including the Red Sea by Ewald Lieske and Robert Myers (Princeton, $35 illustrated). Skin divers, here is the capital “D” Definitive guide to all the fishes you’re ever apt to see on reefs down to 60 meters: 2,074 species and more than 2,500 color illustrations.

GOURMET GETAWAYS: A Taste of North America’s Top Resorts by Paris Permenter & John Bigley (Callawind, $24.95 paperback, illustrated). The authors searched for resorts “where vacationers could, if they chose, never leave the premises for their entire stay.” They settled on 78 favorites in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. Each resort is illustrated in color and includes a recipe for the signature dish from its restaurant.

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Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.