Craig Childs

Finders Keepers A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession Craig Childs Little, Brown: 288 pp., $24.99 Once upon a time, hiking in the desert, you found an artifact; an arrowhead, a piece of a pot, a fragment of bone. You picked it up, put it in your pocket. Maybe you felt a little twinge of guilt when you moved it, maybe all you felt was the desire to keep that object, to place yourself in the story of which that object was itself only a small part. Whose story?

Finders Keepers A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession Craig Childs Little, Brown: 288 pp., $24.99 Once upon a time, hiking in the desert, you found an artifact; an arrowhead, a piece of a pot, a fragment of bone. You picked it up, put it in your pocket. Maybe you felt a little twinge of guilt when you moved it, maybe all you felt was the desire to keep that object, to place yourself in the story of which that object was itself only a small part. Whose story?

THEY lived on the edge of the world, in the red mountains of the desert Southwest, in houses with T-shaped doorways tuned to arcane celestial events. They fashioned elaborate pottery, grew corn and beans in obdurate soil, built ceremonial chambers (kivas) dedicated to sun, stars and gods. By the 11th century, they were a highly evolved, technological society. And then, suddenly, they were gone.

Ilove this book. Curled up in a quiet corner of the college library, I was intending to read a few pages of "The Animal Dialogues." The next thing I knew, the day was gone, the book was done and I sat there grinning with the sweet, sad grin of someone who had just finished a delicious, exotic, omnivore's meal. Yes. Omnivore. For that is what we humans are: omnivorous animals. We eat everything. Plants. Animals. Look me in the eye. What do you see? An omnivorous, bipedal, mostly naked ape.

Ilove this book. Curled up in a quiet corner of the college library, I was intending to read a few pages of "The Animal Dialogues." The next thing I knew, the day was gone, the book was done and I sat there grinning with the sweet, sad grin of someone who had just finished a delicious, exotic, omnivore's meal. Yes. Omnivore. For that is what we humans are: omnivorous animals. We eat everything. Plants. Animals. Look me in the eye. What do you see? An omnivorous, bipedal, mostly naked ape.

First-rate writers and books keep emerging from the American West and delineating the Western experience in smart, edgy ways. Lately there have been Judy Blunt, a memoirist who tells of leaving the constraints of ranch life in the vicinity of Montana's Fort Peck Reservoir in "Breaking Clean," and novelist Judith Freeman, who, in "Red Water," depicts the haunting results of violence following Utah's Mountain Meadows Massacre.

CRAIG Childs finds it strange to be in a place "where people actually go." Eight months of each year he spends walking the Southwest, mostly the Colorado Plateau. If he's lucky, the way he sees it, he gets lost. Traveling in an area that has a few footprints here and there, a place to park the truck before you walk into the canyon, well, he finds this funny, the way some of us chuckle if we happen to find ourselves in McDonald's. What is he looking for?

The Way Out A True Story of Survival Craig Childs Little, Brown: 288 pp., $23.95 Here, then, are my New Year's presents to you: two books about redemption and the triumph of humankind's good nature. "Some of us remain in our places," writes Craig Childs, who has been wandering the Colorado Plateau (sometimes eight months at a stretch) and sending back reports for several decades "while others flee. I am one who remained."

I was appalled that Craig Childs ["Aching Fingers, Concrete Toes," Dec. 28] not only entered an unguarded Anasazi ruin in Arizona but spent the night. Rather than "leave it be," they wandered through a "hive of ancient rooms." Many of our national treasures have been damaged by such thoughtless action. Walking on the rubble can damage the artifacts and structures that can give archeologists insight into ancient and extinct civilizations. Indeed, entering Anasazi ruins is prohibited on public lands.

David L. Ulin reviews "A View of the Ocean" by Jan de Hartog. Chet Raymo reviews "The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild" by Craig Childs. Tim Rutten reviews "The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy" by Bill Hayes. The following reviews are scheduled: Martin Rubin reviews "The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeney Todd: The Life and Times of an Urban Legend" by Robert L. Mack. Steven Moore reviews "You, or the Invention of Memory," a novel by Jonathan Baumbach.

THEY lived on the edge of the world, in the red mountains of the desert Southwest, in houses with T-shaped doorways tuned to arcane celestial events. They fashioned elaborate pottery, grew corn and beans in obdurate soil, built ceremonial chambers (kivas) dedicated to sun, stars and gods. By the 11th century, they were a highly evolved, technological society. And then, suddenly, they were gone.

The Way Out A True Story of Survival Craig Childs Little, Brown: 288 pp., $23.95 Here, then, are my New Year's presents to you: two books about redemption and the triumph of humankind's good nature. "Some of us remain in our places," writes Craig Childs, who has been wandering the Colorado Plateau (sometimes eight months at a stretch) and sending back reports for several decades "while others flee. I am one who remained."

CRAIG Childs finds it strange to be in a place "where people actually go." Eight months of each year he spends walking the Southwest, mostly the Colorado Plateau. If he's lucky, the way he sees it, he gets lost. Traveling in an area that has a few footprints here and there, a place to park the truck before you walk into the canyon, well, he finds this funny, the way some of us chuckle if we happen to find ourselves in McDonald's. What is he looking for?

First-rate writers and books keep emerging from the American West and delineating the Western experience in smart, edgy ways. Lately there have been Judy Blunt, a memoirist who tells of leaving the constraints of ranch life in the vicinity of Montana's Fort Peck Reservoir in "Breaking Clean," and novelist Judith Freeman, who, in "Red Water," depicts the haunting results of violence following Utah's Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Re "Trash, civilization's manna," Opinion, Dec. 3, and "Hunting and gathering -- and starving in rural Zimbabwe," Column One, Dec. 3 In his Op-Ed article, Craig Childs states, "There's something primal and deeply satisfying about searching for the manna of civilization." In the Column One article on Zimbabwe, The Times reports that "people search for scraps in garbage dumps, working shoulder to shoulder with baboons." The juxtaposition of these two articles in the same edition of The Times is deeply disturbing, and one would hope that Childs might reconsider his blithe and light-hearted comments.