"Drawing inspiration from the magical realism of Latin American fiction as much as from the documentary natural history tradition of the North American West, ethnobiologist Gary Paul Nabhan and photographer Mark Klett celebrate the many lives of the Sonoran borderlands. Their Sonoran Desert home is the most biologically and culturally diverse of any arid lands on this continent. As we travel with Nathan and Klett, we hear Seri Indian songs of the summer heat, the bleating of mating desert toads, and the chants of an elderly Hispanic curandera. We catch sight of a night-blooming cereus ready to flower; of homes handmade from the mud, mesquite, and cactus bones surrounding them; and miniature mescal gardens planted for the Virgin Mary. We also confront, face to face the forces threatening to weaken the communities of plants, animals, and cultures of the desert: charcoal making, pesticide spraying, groundwater pumping, overpopulation and rampant ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism." "If the damaged deserts of North America are ever to be restored to their wildness and cultural richness we will need a different set of stories and images to guide our conservation and preservation efforts. This is the underlying theme of Desert Legends, which links startling and ironic photographs with ecologically informed parables."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-204).