For Nancy Lord, what began as a yearning for adventure and a childhood fascination with a wild and distant land culminated in a move to Alaska in the early 1970s. Here she discovered the last place in America “big and wild enough to hold the intact landscapes and the dreams that are so absent today from almost everywhere else.” In Rock, Water, Wild, Lord takes readers along as she journeys among salmon, sea lions, geese, moose, bears, glaciers, and indigenous languages and ultimately into a new understanding, beyond geographic borders, of our intricate and intimate connections to the natural world.

 

Vast and beautiful, and much more than a mere place, Alaska is nonetheless inescapably a land of natural extremes and exquisite subtleties. In Lord’s explorations, “the country” of Alaska evokes reflections on the importance of place and space in our lives; arguments over roads carved in the wilderness; musings on the role of location and landscape in the Dena’ina Athabascan language; accounts of sport fishing in the Russian Far East in the first days of perestroika and of climbing in the Arrigetch Peaks of Alaska’s Brooks Range; and considerations of the politics of whaling. In the tradition of naturalists John Muir and John Burroughs, Lord proves an excellent guide to the challenges and pleasures of making oneself at home on this Earth.

Nancy Lord is Alaska’s writer laureate and a Pushcart Prize–winning author. Her previous acclaimed books include Fishcamp, Green Alaska, The Man Who Swam with Beavers, and Beluga Days.

"These essays connect like the webs of a fishing net, linked by the writer's belief in a 'right place,' a place where lives can find their true shapes. Luckily, Lord has found hers."—Michael Engelhard, High Country News

"In Rock, Water, Wild, Lord takes readers along as she journeys among salmon, sea lions, geese, moose, bears, glaciers, and indigenous languages and ultimately into a new understanding, beyond geographic borders, of our intricate and intimate connections to the natural world."—Sandy Amazeen, MonstersAndCritics.com

“Throughout this collection, Lord brings to each image, each sentence, the sharpness of seeing with love, as did Muir and Burroughs before her. . . . How we live our lives matters—to us, to our community, to wild creatures and to the world. This book matters too—for its vision, its fascinating perspectives, its good sense, its powerful and evocative prose.”—Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally

“Nancy Lord says that for her, living and writing are stones that she turns over and over in her hands, all through her thinking life. For me, her books have been bright reflections from those well-polished stones—clear messages from a life lived well, out of doors, in the North. . . . . You will read this book with pleasure and wonder—and afterward, the world will be a larger, better place.”—Robert Michael Pyle, author of Sky Time in Gray’s River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place

“With this new book it is refreshing to have Nancy Lord’s range of thought and example. Her writing is a gift to the intelligence of those of us who wish to understand our human occupation of this Earth—what we have done and are doing, and what we may learn for the betterment of our future.”—John Haines, author of The Stars, the Snow, the Fire