Review: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
The Solace of Open Spaces is a reflective, contemplative book, one that tries to be earnest about hard but beautiful and deeply felt lives in the Wyoming in the 1970s, particularly what we tend to think of as cowboy or ranch life. Ehrlich paints vivid pictures of that world, and most of the time I think she succeeds in giving the readers true glimpses into those worlds. But there are also moments where that vividness tips into something a little romantic or nostalgic. There are hints of mourning in the book, as if she is not only describing this world but grieving the possibility that it is slipping away.
That tension made the book interesting for me. Ehrlich is at her best when she is sitting deeply with the place she has entered (moving from urban surroundings to the big wide open environments of Wyoming) and, in many ways, become part of. She notices the everyday challenges and rituals: the rituals of people, the rituals of animals, the rituals of the land itself. She pays homage to this place that has become her home.
The book, if read minfully, inspires the reader to be observer of the deep lines of life that populate their surroundings; to put one's own life under the warm-tinted magnifying glass. How would I capture the big and small of everyday life in the world I live in? How might any of us help collectively paint a rich tapestry of meaningful lived lives, with all their nuance, depth, relationships, and connections with other humans, animals and the natural or unnatural world around us?
At the same time, the book kept reminding me of subjectivity. I never felt that Ehrlich was untrustworthy as a narrator, and the pauses I had were not big enough to stop the book for me. But there were moments where I wondered beyond her perspective. Her vantage point is valuable, and I do not doubt the trueness of her experience, but I sometimes wondered whether the people she describes would have experienced those moments the same way. That especially came up for me in her depictions of Indigenous peoples and ceremonies, and also in the way she writes about someone who seems to be grappling with mental illness. These moments did not undo the book, but they did make wonder what was not fully fleshed out.
What works best for me is Ehrlich’s attention to the movement of nature: cows, sheep, dogs, horses, weather, seasons, and landscape. She shows the landscape and seasons as a palpable presence in everyday life. That grounds the essays and where she is strongest with her writing. She captures the way human and animal lives can be shaped by conditions they did not choose. Creatures survive or do not survive because of the harsh conditions around them, and there are tender moments where love and harsh cruelty sit close together in our relationships with animals. She refuses to make nature just look pretty.
Ehrlich is a gifted writer. She deploys smart turns of phrase, and she makes the simple movements of life feel more majestic. She decorates the earthly life of people in Wyoming with literary references and meaning. Her style gives readers a kind of safe way to enter and see this world, especially readers who may be more literary, or who may never have gone to these places or may never find themselves doing this kind of challenging manual and earthly labor. She makes that life legible without reducing it to only physical effort. There is deep insight, endurance, and survival here too.
The outsider-turned-insider position mostly worked for me, but it is also where some of my questions live. Ehrlich gives us parts of her interior life, but doubt, angst, concern, and worry often feel held at bay. There is fondness, admiration, adoration, and curiosity, but the book is more about showing the world than about exploring her reaction to it. That may have been an intentional choice, and it may have made sense for her as a woman writing and publishing a text like this out of the 1970s and 1980s.
The book also reminded me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man. Ehrlich’s book feels like an earlier version of that kind of project: a love letter to a way of life that may no longer be viable, an attempt to honor what feels noble and meaningful and powerful before it slips away through our fingers. Both books seem drawn to people and places that challenge modern assumptions about comfort, labor, survival, and meaning.
The Solace of Open Spaces is strongest when it observes rather than argues. I am less convinced when it edges toward “this is the real way of life,” but I am very moved by its attempt to see meaning in lives that are difficult, ordinary, harsh, beautiful, and deeply embedded in the world around them.
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