Arizona: A View From Above [VINTAGE 1990] [SIGNED]

As new condition brown cloth boards with blind-stamped front cover lettering and copper spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Foreword; Introduction; Bibliography; and Technical Information. Profusely illustrated with 93 (ninety-three) color photographs, including two color photographic frontispieces. Signed and inscribed by the author/photographer with black pen on the blank first free front endpaper. "Like a marsh hawk, Michael Collier is gliding stiff-winged above the open ground, hunting with his eyes. His plane twists this way then that, graceful in the early morning light, aligning itself with an image of cottonwoods along the Santa Cruz River, of limestone ledges in the Mescal Mountains. From 12,000 feet, Arizona is less of a geographic hodgepodge than from below. The kaleidosciopic changes of vegetation - pine to sagebrush to saguaro -- make more sense. Rivers drop out of mountains through canyons and then past broad valleys on their way to the Sea of Cortez. The transitions of high deserts through Rim country to southern deserts become more orderly from an overhead perspective. The world is more connected, less insular than from the ground. After 15 years of flying, after 1,000 hours and 100,000 miles across the Arizona sky, photographer Michael Collier has found a wealth of solitude in his home state, entire worlds of open space. The 93 full-color photographs selected for this aerial essay celebrate the infinitely varied faces of teh Grand Canyon State. Over the years Collier has come to see the state as the melding of five landscapes, each presented as a chapter in this book. To the south, Arizona's deserts host a tremendous biologic diversity, from the cactus, palo verde and creosote of the lowlands to the chaparral and grassland, dotted with scrub oak and manzanita, of the higher elevations. These deserts and grasslands are overlain by a second landscape --mountains that rise like islands above the shimmering heat of the desert floor. Their summits ascent 9,000 and 10,000 feet into a world of cool misty mornings and plentiful rainfall. The Mogollon Rim defines a third sector of the state. This irregular green wall stands almost 8,000 feet above sea level, slashing diagonally northwest to southeast across the state. From the Rim and its associated highlands flow the Little Colorado, Verde, Blue, Black and White rivers. The high deserts of the reservation country and the Arizona Strip lie north of the Rim. Here pinyon and juniper grow where they can, sagebrush and sand where they cannot. Finally, there is the canyon country. Its abysses are carved in a thousand different patters, creating within the high deserts a mirror image of the souther mountains that rise up out of the Sonoran desert. Paired with Collier's magnificent images of these aerial landscapes are selected quotations from four contemporary writers with close ties to the Southwest: naturalists Ed Abbey and Joseph Wood Krutch, poet Lucille Adler and politician Stewart Udall. The result of this thoughful pairing of words and images is a literary as well as visual exploration of Arizona's third diension. Inspired by the spectacular photography in this collection, environmentalist and former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt lends further insight to the book with a rousing essay that asks us to consider the ways we are treating our planet and Arizona's natural lands. In his foreword, Babbitt writes: "When I became governor in 1978 I decided to see what could be done about preserving the last of the remote open spaces that are so distinctive a feature of Arizona .In this book, Michael Collier, with camera and airplane, gives us an eloquent testimonial to the importance of this task." Arizona, A View from Above bears witness that the state's natural landscapes remain largely unspoiled. " - excerpt from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.…