This book is in part the story of a friendship over thirty years centering on love of nature and two men’s quests to understand how to save what they love. At turns literary and scholarly, these essays, poems and public presentations also document not only the evolution of their ideas and expressions of this love, but reflect American culture’s own dialogue about nature and conservation. In heartfelt prose and vivid language, these two friends give back to us some thirty years of the environmental conservation in America.