"Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, ... nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West"--Dust jacket...

"When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons-of learning our own backyard, rewilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience-hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate"--

"David Gessner had always known of John Hay. A nature writing legend, Hay was a hero to the younger writer. But it wasn't until Gessner returned to his childhood home on Cape Cod that he befriended the older man. At first, Gessner thought he might write the biography of the man many consider to be our greatest living nature writer. But that idea quickly changed as the two talked and walked through the fifty acres surrounding Hay's house on Dry Hill....