Reflections of the Brazos Valley Review

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(More customer reviews)The general theme of this interesting book is that beauty can be found in your own backyard if you concentrate on subtleties rather than dramatic landscapes. It reminds me of when my wife and I moved from California to Edmonton, Alberta. At first, the aspen, spruce and pine looked pretty puny in comparison, but gradually we developed a love of aspen parklands and boreal forest. We came to the conclusion that it is not wise to compare different regions of the world but, rather, to view each region as unique. Learning something about the geologic history of the area helps one to see this uniqueness.
To return to the book, the text and photographs fit very well together. The author of the text, Jimmie Killingsworth, has an obvious love of nature, and he has a straightforward and non-pretentious writing style, laced with humour and a touch of mysticism.
The photographs are equally beautiful. Some have a painterly quality that goes beyond the depiction of natural beauty to suggest other themes. For example, a photograph of a cotton field that stretches into the distance, with a small house in the background, somehow captures something of the old south that manages to hang on. The photograph also has an internal dynamism in that the clouds, that seem to be moving from left to right, appear to be bending the tree in the middle of the photograph to the right as well. This interaction of elements is interesting and provocative.
This may be reading more into the photograph than the photographer intended, but that is the beauty of artistic photography: it is a canvas upon which the viewer can add his or her own meaning.

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Many years ago, John Graves said goodbye to a wild river that tumbled out of the Hill Country and was forever changed by dams and people. In this book we say hello to that same river farther down its course, in the valley that carries its name.When naming the signature landscapes of Texas, if you have never said "Brazos Valley" in the same breath as "Hill Country" or "Big Bend," this book could change your mind. In the fine, penetrating photography of D. Gentry Steele and the revealing, affectionate reflections of M. Jimmie Killingsworth, the Brazos Valley has found its champions in two adopted sons who have learned to love its quiet, uncelebrated beauty.In words and pictures, Killingsworth and Steele remind us that this valley was the birthplace of a republic, was once the agricultural heart of Texas, and was the ancestral home of a great alluvial river. Here, the Brazos is--and isn't--John Graves's river, the one with clear-running waters flowing beneath limestone cliffs. A little south of Waco, the river gets bigger, slower, muddier. In its middle reaches it creates a wide swath of bottomlands and prairies where, if you take the time to look, you will discover the natural virtues of this place: peaceful glens, watered forests, flowers, birds, and backyard wildlife.This book will inspire all who live and work here--and those who just visit--to see the Brazos Valley anew and form a fuller appreciation of what it offers.

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