'A master nature writer' (New York Times) provides the ultimate natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic landscape.
The author of Horizon's classic work explores the Arctic landscape and the hold it continues to exert on our imagination.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANE
Lopez's journey across our frozen planet is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes. Home to millions of diverse animals and people. The stage to massive migrations by land, sea and air. The setting of epic exploratory…
"The Wild Places" is both an intellectual and a physical journey, and Macfarlane travels in time as well as space. Guided by monks, questers, scientists, philosophers, poets and artists, both living and dead, he explores our changing ideas of the wild. From the cliffs of Cape Wrath, to the holloways of Dorset, the storm-beaches of Norfolk, the saltmarshes and estuaries of Essex, and the moors of Rannoch and the Pennines, his journeys become the conductors of people and cultures, past and present, who have had intense relationships with these places. Certain birds, animals, trees and objects - snow-hares, falcons, beeches,…
During the 1870s a group of merchants and their allies, known as "The House," gained control over the economy of Lincoln County, New Mexico. In 1877 this control was challenged by an English entrepreneur, John Tunstall. The House violently resisted the interloper, eventually killing him; Tunstall's employees and supporters, known as the Regulators, sought to take vengeance on the House by killing those responsible for Tunstall's death. Among the Regulators was a young man known as Billy the Kid.
This story of greed, violence, and death has entered American folklore through the mythologizing of the career of Billy the Kid…
Nate Champion strikes out to Wyoming Territory and discovers the allure of the Powder River Basin as an ideal location for raising cattle. First he must build up a bankroll by hiring out to the cattle companies already established there. Earning a reputation as a top hand, as a uniquely gifted horse trainer, and as a man of his word, he becomes one of the few men in the territory whom the small ranchers can trust.
The largest herds in Wyoming belong to investors from the East and from England, who, because of the size of their herds, monopolize the “free range” guaranteed by the government. In time, these barons feel a tacit ownership of all the land, and they devise ways to exert that ownership by having the backing of powerful interests not only in local law and media, but in Washington, D. C. as well. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association is their front, and through this corrupt entity the rich owners declare themselves omnipotent. They make their own laws . . . and they enforce them.
When the Association begins to eliminate small ranchers through ghastly executions, the classic battle lines form between the rich man and the commoner. Because he is trusted, Nate Champion becomes a rallying point for the oppressed, and this leads to his name topping a list of inconvenient ranchers whom the barons want to see removed from the face of the Earth.
