This is a collection of poems, stories, and essays with a quirky charm and regional Western flavour. The works in this anthology range from "Wild West" parodies to essays on the perils of hiking in California, and from poems that twist trickster fables to ones that explore the dangers of jogging in mountain lion country. These writers reveal that the land is a character: sometimes a mother, sometimes a joker, never an enemy, though one must take care. The space can be refreshing or oppressive, as the paradox of openness is that it tends to control and confine as much as free us. The weather plans your day. Snowstorms dont negotiate. The West makes people acutely aware of the absurdity of their smallness, and this feeling is the source of much of the humour in the anthology. The sensation of being tiny, that crazed adrenaline rush and the feeling of your heart beating in your throat, has to make you laugh out loud like a roller coaster. The twenty authors in this collection will take you for an interesting ride.
