A new book takes readers on a fascinating journey into the heart of the Texas Panhandle. In Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place, Shelley Armitage invites readers to consider the unique character and geology of the Staked Plains. The book is a treasure of photographs, anecdotes, musings, philosophical wanderings, memories, and historical facts, all told through Armitage’s engaging and heartfelt prose.
The book begins with the author’s intention to walk the thirty miles from her family farm to the Canadian River. The journey becomes a chance for Armitage to ponder the connection between her own family and the area’s first settlers. Armitage is Professor Emerita of English and American Studies at UTEP, and the work is the result of a lifetime of thinking about what the Llano Estacado means—not just as a place on a map, but as a location in the mind, a landscape of imagination.