A collection of engaging and provocative essays, Prairie Soul extends the transcendental tradition of writers like Aldo Leopold and Annie Dillard. Entomologist and nature writer Jeffrey Lockwood writes about humans and insects from the grasslands of Wyoming, where he has lived and worked for almost two decades. Like Ed Abbey’s Southwestern desert or Wendell Berry’s rural Kentucky, Lockwood’s home environment and study of grasshoppers form an interesting starting point for consideration of universal concerns and connections with the world at large. Lockwood thoughtfully examines:
• Spirituality and the place of religion in science
• The soulful connection between human beings and the places they live
• Grasslands and ecology
• The environment as common ground that transcends cultural and political boundaries
Prairie Soul is the story of one man’s evocative journey of ecological, moral, and spiritual discovery, unfolding on the high plains of Wyoming and stretching to the grasslands of France and central Asia.
Possessing an extraordinary sense of harmony with these often forbidding and unforgiving landscapes, Lockwood’s essays are paradoxical revelations, blending the deeply familiar with the profoundly exotic.
