Wood Lake Nature Center Book Club: Journal of a Prairie Year

Join other adults to discuss some wonderful environmental and outdoor recreation-based books. Refreshments will be provided. All books are available at local libraries, or may be available for loan through the nature center.  $5 per session; free for members.

When there is no summit to reach not farther shore to attain–only a constantly receding point between earth and sky to follow–a journey proceeds as much into one’s own mind as it does into the natural world. Sauntering through the tall grasses of the prairie, Paul Gruchow engages in just such a boundless journey, exploring simultaneously the subtle beauty of the Great Plains and the mind’s astonishment at such grandeur.

Charting one cycle of seasons, Journal of a Prairie Year reveals countless cycles of thought: the innumerable sounds of winter snow beg us to understand its song; the fecundity of spring questions the accuracy of naming its abundance; the tenacity of prairie roots in a summer drought contrast with the shallow roots of our culture; and the mortality of fall mirrors our steady destruction of a once seemingly infinite expanse.

The result is equal parts phenology and philosophy, a blend of natural and human history from a writer who “makes empty places full and a reader’s imagination soar” (Washington Post): calling us to remember a threatened world, and urging us to reach for its unmarred horizon.