Words from a Wide Land

If you enjoyed books like A Sand County Almanac or A Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, you’ll love Words from a Wide Land. Barney brings insights of people and places, natural phenomena, birds, animals, insects, and other things he has encountered in many years of living and traveling. In these entries (a year’s worth, though not in chronological order by year), can be found humor, romance, delight, philosophy, even terror. He has measured the life about him with a flair, which at times bursts into poetry.

From the book: September 6, 1977. The migration of birds resembles Pickett’s Charge. Thousands are lost in frontal collisions with skyscrapers, are picked off by rough predators, buffeted by wind and storm. But they keep coming on, advancing, year after year, as if there were no Cemetery Ridge.

May 12, 1967. The Swainson thrush has been fluting his little strangled bugle call from the red mulberry tree now several days. It is much like the wood thrush’s call in quality, but reduced in an echo chamber, to a mere whisper. Still, it is an unmistakable signature of one week in May, which I have hardly heard at any other time.