“Ruby McConnell’s book is a lyrical sampler of the history of the west and its wild spirit. McConnell beautifully muses on the call of the wild, why Americans have answered it over and over again, and the dangers of the myth of wilderness. Beginning with settlers and cowboys and moving through the environmental movement, hippies, and Burning Man, this book explores what the west means and what people have found upon their arrival from pre-contact eras to modern times.”
—Tove Danovich, journalist and author of Under the Henfluence
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruby McConnell is a writer, geologist and explorer whose work centers on outdoor advocacy, place, and examining the relationships between the landscape and the human experience. Her work has appeared in scientific journals and outlets including Alta Journal, Huffington Post, Mother Earth News, Oregon Humanities, Grain Literary Magazine and LitHub, and was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in 2016. She is the author of the critically acclaimed outdoor engagement series A Woman’s Guide to the Wild, A Girl’s Guide to the Wild, and My Nature Journal and Activity Book, and Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life, a collection of environmental essays which was a finalist for the 2020 Oregon Book Awards that was listed as one of Ms. Magazine’s Best Books of the Year. Look for her new books, Wilderness and the American Spirit (Overcup Press) and Dirty Secrets (Basic Books) in spring of 2024 and fall 2025. You can almost always find her in the woods.