Okay listen up everyone,' I said, zipping up my high visibility jacket. 'It will be most effective to comb the local area by taking a village each.' I told my team as I traced my finger across the map. My experience as a former copper was invaluable for our search. We weren't looking for a missing person though - we had a dog to find." Any pet owner knows the agonising panic when their beloved furry family member goes missing, but Tom Watkins, former policeman turned pet detective, is on hand to reunite our animal companions with their owners. From recording the owner's voice to lure cats from their hiding place, to organising a fly-over to raise the profile of missing Toby the terrier, from emptying the contents of the owner's vacuum to tempt in the missing animal with the scent, to organising a Crimewatch-style reconstruction of a dog-snatching on national TV, Tom will do whatever it takes to get the nation's pets home, safe and sound. The Real Pet Detective is the story of 20 years of missing pets, their owners and Tom's team of expert pet investigators.
As a collection of geological and climatic phenomena, the earth is a scarred, bent, cracked, and agitated wreck of a place. Nowhere is this more evident than in Utah's redrock canyon country, which is among the most spectacular terrain not only in America but in the world. These extraordinary lands lie at the heart of the Colorado Plateau -- 130,000 square miles of uplifted rock sitting like a huge island in an earthly continental sea, surrounded on all sides by the remnants of once-active volcanoes. Although the Colorado Plateau includes portions of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, in no other part of any other state are its complexity and time-constructed beauty illuminated more brilliantly than in southern Utah. Tourists and outdoor enthusiasts by the millions visit and revisit the area because there is no place else on earth quite like it. In The Redrock Chronicles, T. H. Watkins, one of America's best-known and award-winning writers on the environment and history, focuses on southern Utah's unprotected lands in a loving testament to its warps and tangles of rock and sky. Combining history, geography, and photography, the author reports the full story of the region -- from its violent geologic beginnings to the coming (and going) of pre-Puebloan peoples whose drawings still adorn rocks and caves there, from the Mormon settlement of the 1840s and 1850s to the great uranium boom of the 1950s, from the beginning of tourism and parkland protection in the 1930s to today's controversial movement to preserve millions of acres of wild Utah land in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Indeed, the account of that revolutionary movement is told here in all its color and complexity for the first time. Writing from his own personal experience and extensive research, an appreciative Watkins takes readers on a tour of the Grand Staircase of plateaus, moving from the utterly wild triangle of Kaiparowits Plateau, with its erosion-sculptured mesas, tablelands, benchlands, and canyons, to a more welcoming kind of verdant wilderness that sits northeast, across the rolling desert scrubland of Harris Wash, in the red-walled canyon of the Escalante River. The author has spent much time hiking and camping here among the isolated buttes and mesas, and he draws a vivid portrait of the area's highlights: Comb Ridge, a 90-mile wall of 600-foot cliffs; Waterpocket Fold, an even more spectacular monocline to the northeast of the Escalante River, stretching a hundred miles; the Henry Mountains; Hump of Bull Mountain; Cataract Canyon; and the San Rafael Swell, an enormous oval some 2,200 square miles which rises just north of Capitol Reef National Park. But The Redrock Chronicles is not simply a celebration. Watkins concludes with a spirited call for the preservation of the unprotected wilderness that gives the land its character and color. He offers the legislative device of wilderness designation as the necessary means of saving this plateau country that is not marked by one or two or even three or four scenic marvels but by an enormous kaleidoscope of geological diversity whose impact on the senses can set the mind to reeling with every turn.
Any pet owner knows the agonizing panic when their beloved furry family member suddenly goes missing. Fear no more: Tom Watkins, former policeman turned true-life pet detective, is on hand to reunite animal companions with families across the nation. From recording the owner's voice to lure cats from their hiding place, to organizing a flyover and a CRIMEWATCH-style reconstruction of a dog-snatching (for Toby the Terrier), Tom will do whatever it takes to get the nation's pets home, safe and sound. This is the story of twenty years of missing pets and their owners, and the adventures of Tom's team of expert pet investigators.
Tom Morton, keen motorcyclist, funeral celebrant and whisky aficionado, takes us on a journey around the globe, exploring the links between famous alcoholic spirits and spirituality. Waters of life. Distilled spirits of all kinds have borne that name, in various tongues, since time immemorial. Aqua vita. Eau de vie. Uisge Beatha. Tom Morton has travelled the world in search of the finest drams the planet has to offer. His journeys reveal the links between faith and alcohol, between spirits and the spiritual. From Christianity’s Holy Communion to the temple libations of Japan, through the rum concoctions of Haitian Voodoo to the monastic producers of every liquid from beer to "tonic" wine. And of course Tom’s beloved whisky, brewed in many corners of the world. Holy Waters is Tom’s journey to the spiritual heart of whisky, sake, rum, Champagne, beer, mead and a variety of wines. With great insight, humour and for the most part sobriety, he traces the links between brewing, winemaking, distilling and worship, from ancient pagan rites to the most modern Trappist technology. He revels in the lore and mysteries of craft production, the elemental, magical love stories, the passionate relationships between human and landscape, grain and pure water, grape and fire. And he does so on a motorcycle which, to his astonishment, runs very well on cask-strength Islay single malt. This book is a celebration of cultures and artisan craft, a book for food and drink, travel and history lovers.
From purple mountains' majesty to the grasslands and deserts, America the beautiful appears in all its' unequalled splendor. Breathtaking peaks of the Rockies; magnificent coastlines and untamed forests; wetlands, rivers, deserts, and prairies: the recognized master of landscape and nature photography David Muench has captured it all, in nearly 200 full-color photographs of unspoiled American wilderness. The images display our grandest borders, the soundless expanse, and all the awe-inspiring bounty of this land. View an approaching storm over the White Sands Natural Monument, New Mexico; cypress and tupelo in North Carolina; dune grass with seastacks in Cape Sebastian, Oregon; and the bright autumn foliage of New Hampshire's White Mountains. T.H. Watkins, one of the nation's finest natural history writers, adds his superb narration to the photos, completing the perfect portrait of our great American landscape.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.