In the Willapa Hills of southwest Washington, both the human community and the forest community are threatened with extinction. Virtually every acre of the hills has been logged, often repeatedly, in the past hundred years, endangering both the land and the people, leaving dying towns as well as a devastated ecosystem. Weaving vivid portraits of the place and its inhabitants-animal, plant, and human-with the story of his own love affair with the hills, Robert Michael Pyle has written a book so even-handed in its passion that it has been celebrated by those who make their living with a chain saw as well as by environmentalists. As he writes, ‘My sympathies lie with the people and the woods, but not with the companies that have used them both with equal disregard.

In his vivid portrayal of the land, plants, people and animals of the Willapa Hills of Washington State, Bob Pyle makes the modest patch of land he writes about a metaphor for the world.