For the first time in paperback with a new foreword by the author, On the Mesa is an autobiographical celebration of life in a fragile and marginal place. On the deserted sagebrush plain just west of his home in Taos, New Mexico, John Nichols finds a healing serenity and an astonishing variety of life and mood that casual observers rarely notice. With On the Mesa, Nichols takes his place with the great nature writers of the West.