Satellite: Essays on Fatherhood and Home, Near and Far

“Unfailingly engaging and lyrical. A beautifully written love letter to the intertwining tendrils of nature and community, Satellite takes its rightful place among the finest work by outstanding Sonoran Desert writers including Gary Paul Nabhan, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Alberto Ríos." — Michael P. Branch, author of On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer “A beautiful book grounded in family, community, and nature to take hope and inspiration from.” — Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower “A rich and warm and love-filled meditation . . . Generosity of spirit and constancy of attention imbue every one of the essays in this splendid, shining collection.” — Elizabeth Dodd, author of Horizon’s Lens: My Time on the Turning World “From the direct sensual pleasures of photographing wildflowers and drinking beer to the more complex pleasures and pains of fatherhood, fraught with dangers from rattlesnakes to mood swings, this beautiful and deep collection of essays covers fascinating terrain. . . . A moving distillation of a lifetime of work and thought.” — David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West “Unlike so many of his predecessors, Buntin is never torn between loving the wilderness and loving his family, between wanting to explore with his camera and wanting to explore with his young daughters. The love for one increases the love for the other in a sort of whirlwind of curiosity, generosity, and deep feeling. These are thoughtful, detail-rich essays that are deeply engaged with the natural world and with humans as part of the menagerie. They model in the best way what I have lately heard called tonic masculinity and manage to have a great deal of fun in the process.” — Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country “Satellite links us lyrically to expanses of wildness, recollections of familial experience, . . . orbiting an ever revolving heartfelt artistry that takes the reader on a journey toward reverence, respect, and greater kinship with nature and humanity . . . An act of love.” — J. Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature “Whether admiring the Great Orion Nebula with his daughter, chasing a rare ‘explosion’ of desert wildflowers along the U.S.-Mexico border, asserting craft beers as an expression of place, or meditating on individual and communal heritage, Buntin invites us to rediscover the extraordinary in the seemingly simple intimacies—with people and places, near and far. Wherever you call home, Satellite is a guide to belonging and cherishing ‘the sheer abundance of it all.’ ” — John T. Price, author of All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations “Even as naturalist and writer Simmons Buntin introduces his daughters to nature, he must come to terms with his place in the world . . . yielding to beauty, building wonder, and sketching out hope for our children. Here is a field guide to a father’s love.” — Janisse Ray, Craft and Current: A Manual for Magical Writing “The best personal essays offer insights into the world as well as the writer. Simmons Buntin manages that fine balance in this collection, which ranges geographically across the American West, from his Tucson backyard to the slopes of Mount Saint Helens, and ranges autobiographically from memories of growing up as the son of a troubled mother to scenes of delight and anguish as the father of two young daughters. Readers will find him an illuminating guide as he searches for beauty and spiritual grounding in nature, a search reflected in the haunting photographs that accompany each essay.” — Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination “I can’t think of a better guide—to whiptails, desert super blooms, craft beer, constellations, photography, fatherhood, community, and, well, life—than Simmons Buntin. From Denver to Tucson, the Bosque del Apache, Mount Saint Helens, and beyond, Buntin writes with equal facility about the beautiful, dynamic intricacies of the natural world and the many lovely, knee-buckling complexities of family. These wide-ranging, self-aware, astute essays will leave you enlightened and deeply glad—glad right down to your heart and bones, the feathery roots of what some of us might even call a soul.” — Joe Wilkins, author of The Entire Sky