"Moving through landscapes of erosion and uplift, collapse and contortion, Root might be looking for what defines him and his home, but he offers us even more: the reminder that when we know more about not just who and where we are but also when we are, we can begin to wrestle with the fallacy of arbitrary boundaries and to understand-deeply-the value of humility. What a satisfyingly provocative read."

-Barbara Hurd, author of The Epilogues

"'Always alert for synchronicity, ' Robert Root takes us along his nature hikes as he follows the Niagara Escarpment. His exacting descriptions illuminate his observations: natural springs, sink holes, caves with spots of hungry mud, gorges, creeks, ravines, alvars and grikes (the latter big enough to shelter bears), dancing sand, lighthouses, grottos, arches, waterfalls, and plunge pools. And he enriches these stories of stone and scalloped shorelines with research, revealing a stunning breadth of history held in shapes that glaciers made."

-Christine Stewart-Nuñez, author of Chrysopoeia: Essays of Language, Love, and Place

"In the tradition of Loren Eiseley and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bob Root offers the reader a chance to take his hand and go on a journey under the skin of complex ecologies. Over a lifetime of observation and contemplation of human and more than human ecologists in the fulsome Great Lakes region, this writer brings to bear a wealth of detail and insights that traverse time and ecological thought. As we huddle and contend with climate change, Root is with us as he records and reveres specific, complex places and indigenous knowledge of place, so essential to understanding what it means to be human now."

-Leslie Carol Roberts, author of The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica