Journal of a Prairie Year
by Paul Gruchow
"The essential feature of the prairie is the horizon, which you can neither walk to, or touch."
Standing at the northeastern edge of the million-square-mile expanse, Paul Gruchow looks beyond the vast expression of flatness and fertility to plumb what is less often perceived there: a definitively taciturn landscape that has as much to teach us about our own minds as it does about the natural world.
Both a phenology and a philosophy, Journal of a Prairie Year charts one cycle of seasons, but reveals countless cycles of thought. The silence of winter snow juxtaposes our inability to hear its song; the fecundity of spring uncovers the trouble of naming; the tenacity of a prairie plant in sumer's heat calls to question the definition of a weed; the morality of fall asks why we can't resist driving the remains of this landscape toward extinction.
Originially published twenty-three years ago, Journal of a Prairie Year remains one of the finest depictions of the prairie ever written, an essential reintroduction to a threatened world.
Read the new foreword from Scott Russell Sanders 
Author's Bio:Paul Gruchow is the author of Journal of a Prairie Year (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), The Necessity of Empty Places (St. Martin's Press, 1988), Travels in Canoe Country (Little, Brown, 1992), Grass Roots (Milkweed Editions, 1995), and Boundary Waters (Milkweed Editions, 1997). Raised in Montevideo, Minnesota, he was educated at the University of Minnesota and worked as the managing editor of the Worthington Daily Globe. Prior to his death in 2004, Paul taught at St. Olaf College and Concordia College, and was a frequent contributor to the Utne Reader, the New York Times, and the Hungry Mind Review, among other publications.
Quotes:Praise for Journal of a Prairie Year
"Gruchow writes of the glare of moonlight on snow; of the impulse to name and possess things in the natural world; of prairie phlox, garter snakes, and the dust in the air that turns the sunlight crimson . . . an alertness permeates this enduring book." —Los Angeles Times
Praise for Paul Gruchow
"Like Thoreau, [Gruchow] writes in a style as clear, as ordinary and as filled with brilliace as the night sky."
—Mary Phipher, author of Reviving Opelia
"Paul Gruchow is a most responsible citizen of the literary world who coaxes us to value and embrace our wild places with gifted conviction."
—Jim Brandenburg
"Gruchow's vision, like that of Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, is a corrective to the notion that increased agricultural efficiency and productivity is a sure sign of prosperity." —ISLE
"Gurchow is clear-eyed, quietly eloquent, and very much worth reading." —Vermont Sunday Magazine
"Gruchow has a gift not only for aphorism but for description." —Kirkus
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Price:
$ 14.00
Binding: Paperback
Availability In Stock: 292
Available Immediately
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2009
Size: 5.5 x 8.5
Genre: Nature/Memoir
Pages: 160 pp
ISBN: 9781571313188
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