All the Wild and Lonely Places

My first book, All the Wild and Lonely Places, was published by Island Press/Shearwater Books in 2000. It’s about the Anza-Borrego Desert region of southern California, east of San Diego, a special place to me. I spent a lot of time there beginning in 1987 when my wife, Diane, and I took the Sierra Club’s Basic Mountaineering Course. I fell in love with the desert peaks, boulders, canyons, palm groves, and strange plants. And most of all the views.

The book is a blend of personal narrative and environmental history, exploring the changes in the landscape through time, especially as humans arrived and began changing what we view as wilderness.

“…a well-crafted, learned companion for any voyage into that arid country.” –Gregory McNamee, Amazon review.

“…an intensely important book, relevant far outside the sun-drenched confines of San Diego and Imperial counties. All the Wild and Lonely Places may appear to be a collection of musings by a veteran desert hiker – and it is, one of the most appealing such in some time – but it’s also a stealth polemic. It’s not much of a stretch to call Hogue’s work one of the most important books of the last decade on California’s environment.” –Chris Clarke, editor of Faultline

You can find the book here.