Llano Estacado: An Island in the Sky (Voice in the American West)

The Llano Escatado spans much of northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico. It is an elevated plain of sun, grass, and sky. It "stretches for 250 miles north to south, two hundred miles east to west, and is culturally and geographically an island." It makes a mark on those who traverse it and takes the measure of those who live there.The notion behind LLANO ESCATADO: AN ISLAND IN THE SKY was to try to capture the Llano Escatado's "sense of place" through photographs and text. The book features photographs of the Llano by six different photographers, taken during 2005. Supplementing the photographs are a 28-page essay about the history of the Llano by Stephen Bogener and short pieces from six different authors who were asked simply to write something about their experiences with the Llano.By and large, the photographs are much more successful than the prose. Four of the portfolios are in color, the other two in black-and-white. My favorite two portfolios (by Miguel Gandert and Tony Gleaton) are the black-and-white ones, although that may be due in part to my natural preference for black-and-white photography as well as to the fact that those two sets of photos feature people much more extensively than do the color portfolios. Still, the photographs - both black-and-white and color - constitute the reason to get the book or seek it out in a library.Of the essays, the most valuable one is the longer one by Stephen Bogener, which provides a useful historical overview of the Llano. Of the remaining six, two were worthwhile (the ones by William Kittredge and Annick Smith), two were so-so, and two should not have been published. And while I am in my critical paragraph, I will bemoan the lack of a map. Here we have a large-format, glossy-paper-stock, otherwise handsomely produced volume with a retail price of $45 that omits a simple map on which to locate towns and geological features discussed in the texts or pictured in the photographs, including the pioneering town of Estacado (which no longer exists and therefore cannot be located in any current atlas).LLANO ESTACADO is published by the university press of Texas Tech, which is located in Lubbock, one of the two large cities on the Llano (the other being Amarillo). Curiously, Lubbock has been home to a number of noted, though somewhat maverick, musical figures, including Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, John Denver, Joe Ely, and Jimmy Dale Gilmore. I cannot resist closing with something Butch Hancock, yet another Lubbock native and one of the most agile and clever songwriters going, said:"Living in Lubbock taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell; the other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

I grew up in this area and it is a beautiful slice of home I can visit.