Breathing Stone: Living Small in a Southwest Village, by Betsy James

For almost four years in the early 1990s, writer, artist, and backcountry hiker Betsy James rented part of an old adobe near the center of a New Mexican village. She had worked for years with cultures very like those that had shaped Placitas—in Mexico, Albuquerque, Zuni Pueblo. She gave this place her best mortal attention, and recorded what she could. This is the result.

“Breathing Stone: Living Small in a Southwest Village immerses you in the magic of the New Mexico desert. Mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and plants spring to life through the sharp, observant eye of Betsy James. This book is an unexpected gem sparkling in sunlight.”

—Judith Schiess Avila, author of Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII

“A must-have for anyone who has ever lived in the desert Southwest or who dreams to. A perfect combination of prose, poetry, and line drawings. If you’ve never lived in a village in the Southwest, this book will entice you. If you have, it will feel like coming home.”

—Dr. K. Kitts, NASA Primary Investigator and Science Team Member

“Transcendentalist poet and iconoclast Henry David Thoreau wrote in the 1850s that ‘The question is not what you look at, but what you see.’ He also commented that he had ‘traveled a good deal in Concord.’ In this slim volume, poet and painter Betsy James has taken the New Englander at his word, only what she has seen is in New Mexico and she has traveled a good deal in the ancient villa of Placitas at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. She bested Thoreau, in my opinion, with a keener eye and a broader sensitivity to her environment.… This book is a genuine addition to New Mexico literature.”

—Don Bullis, historian, New Mexico Centennial Author

“Sojourn in the natural historic beauty of Placitas
Walk its ancient trails
Listen to wind in the tall grass
Glimpse an owl in solemn flight
Find deep quiet in an old adobe on the old mountain
Escape to another time”

—Martha Liebert, author of
Bernalillo: Between the River & a Hard Place

“Betsy James’s sensitive and poetic reflections and observations of four years living in a New Mexican village make you feel as if you were accompanying her through all seasons.”

—David Grant Noble, author of In the Places of the Spirits and Ancient Ruins and Rock Art of the Southwest: an Archaeological Guide