A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places

by Christopher Brown

A genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto for rewilding the city, the self, and society.

A Natural History of Empty Lots is a genre-defying work of nature writing, literary nonfiction, and memoir that explores what happens when nature and the city intersect. To do this, we must challenge our assumptions of nature itself.

During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—a brownfield site bisected with an abandoned petroleum pipeline and littered with concrete debris and landfill trash—was an unlikely site for a home. Along with his son, Brown had explored similar empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment as Austin became a 21st century boom town. He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, learned how easy it is to bring back the wild in our own backyards, and discovered that, by working to heal the wounds we have made on the Earth, we can also heal ourselves. Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, A Natural History of Empty Lots offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Environment, Memoir, Ecology, Audiobook

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 17, 2024

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how creative and insightful this is, and more books and writers should absolutely take inspiration from this, but it’s too wordy. It’s one of the few books I’ve been really upset that I didn’t fall in love with it, but I’m sure some people will.

[Mel Thomas]

some really lovely stuff in here. will def revisit this one in years to come.

[J.S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

After his divorce and the 2008 market crash, Christopher Brown purchased a vacant lot in Austin, Texas. Not a vacant residential lot, which wouldn't have been too far out of the ordinary, but a vacant lot in an industrial area. Littered with trash and concrete and even an old petroleum pipe, the site needed plenty of cleanup before he could build a home there. And in the years it took to accomplish all this he started a new family and explored the area and river running through Austin, finding more wildlife than he had expected, and chronicled it in this memoir.

Brown, a lawyer and science fiction writer, has built a truly amazing house - I looked it up online and it's really cool. It's not an embarrassing mansion but rather a modern concrete and glass structure that incorporates its design into nature - the roof is covered in native soil and plants, practically hiding it from certain angles. He even has a triangular pool out front that complements the house beautifully. And the high point for me really was when he discussed the house itself and the way it invites nature - sometimes in unpleasant and unplanned ways, such as the snakes that found it to their liking.

But while I applaud his admirable accomplishment, there's a profound sense of ennui from Mr. Brown's writing which saturates the book with weariness and cynicism. He continually refers to pretty much everything as polluted, destroyed, and even brutalized by us. He seems to have such a deep disdain for humanity, especially the white "colonists" of the US, that everything about us is a plague. It's so pervasive that I found little joy in his descriptions of seeing foxes, owls, and hawks. He even describes the trash along the river in great detail. Of course, environmentalist that he is, he complains when the real estate crowd starts looking at the area for redevelopment after he sets in motion the gentrification of his neighborhood by publicizing his beautiful home in the dumps. The optimism (or at least the small measure of joy) I hoped to find in the book was too weighed down by Brown's pessimism, and I had to force myself to finish. In the end, I found the book simply 'meh' - nice in a few parts, but mostly not an enjoyable read. (I received an advance electronic reviewer copy from NetGalley and the publisher.)

[David Biello · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who lives in a city but yearns for the country, or thinks that somehow people have removed themselves from nature and into an unnatural world. The natural world is in you and around you, just waiting for you to notice and connect, and the masterful writing of Christopher Brown can show you how through the example of his recent life.

[Forrest · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a soft spot for books about psychogeography. Having been lucky enough to have been born a world traveler (thanks, Dad), I have a strong sense of place, particularly for places I've "discovered" and wandered through. A lot of those places were (and are) off the beaten path. As a result, I was particularly vulnerable (that's the popular word all the kids are using these days, isn't it?), which, of course, exposes one, makes one maybe a little touchy, when assessing a work like Christopher Brown's A History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgeland, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places. I saved up for this book, and was ready to really cherish it, give it the benefit of the doubt, you know, be vulnerable.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that things got off to a rough start. I'll be frank, the beginning was downright boring. I even thought about lemming the book. But I love the subject matter enough that I gave it a chance. It felt choppy and poorly written. Only about 80 pages in did I feel like it had gained momentum and a bit of eloquence. I'm not sure where the editing really kicked in - was the first part poorly edited, or later parts well-edited, or did the editors start with an iron fist and let off as the book ran its course? I'll never know. But at some point it felt like two different books. Even 133 pages in, my notes read:

Is this book good, or just nice? I toggle back and forth between opinions on this one. I can't decide if it's "big" or "small," and I frankly only have an ill-conceived hint of a notion about what I even mean by that. It has its moments, but, then again, it has its moments, whatever that means in my intellectually lazy assessment. Maybe this book isn't for me, or I'm not for it?

This didn't bode well.

Thing is, I liked Brown's approach: Not alarmist, but not letting us off the hook for our environmental sins so easily, either. There's a touch of sadness and a touch of hope in those interstitial spaces where wilderness and domesticated spaces meet. I find a particularly wry, grim humor at work when Brown points out that roadkill might be one of the best indicators that wildness persists even in our most urbanized areas.

Really, I think the issue might be a problem with scope. A Natural History of Empty Lots feels most effective when focused on smaller scopes. The lone-standing "Holy Tree" (I'll call it), the lot on which the author carved out his own ecological/familial niche, etc. This reading might be the result of my own experiences exploring, particularly as a child, my own little niches: the Priory at Chicksands, dirty mechanical access tunnels to underground parking at the high-rise apartments where we lived in Brindisi, Italy (I still have nightmares where a hag suddenly appears in front of me in those tunnels, sending a chill up my spine and paralyzing me), the vast water-drainage system I entered (and almost got stuck in) at the bottom of the hill where I lived in Capehart Base Housing in Nebraska, the abandoned (and supposedly haunted) owl-infested Albion school in Idaho where we had a family reunion years ago.

The macro-scale of the book is interesting, to some degree, on a philosophical level, while the micro-scale foci are very interesting at an experiential level. I suppose there's something to be said for having one's own (now internal) experiences evoked by an external source. Maybe that's the trick.

For instance, the subsection "Foraging for Meaning," a list of found and created objects, does more to paint the narrative of the liminal space between civilization and the wild than any narrative. It is merely a list, but to me it seemed something much, much more poignant, showing, rather than telling, revealing meaning without speaking of meaning at all. Just a list of found and curated junk, for the most part. And yet, it seemed profound. Apotheosis in the trash stratum.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has taken me what seems like an age to finish.

I think this took me a while to get into as it was slow going at the start. Brown chimes in with far too much superfluous information about his divorce and his son (I get it, you love your kid and love spending time with him but it isn't necessary to tell us that every 5 minutes!)

I was expecting something in the realms of Richard Mabey but Brown has a business/lawyer background so the nature writing doesn't seem to flow naturally from him.

I was tempted to give up after the first few chapters as the style got a bit repetitive (talking about buying his plot of land and outdoor visits with his son), but then the actual nature writing seemed to kick in and it got a whole lot better. The species discussed are interesting from a UK perspective, as much of the wildlife we don't encounter here. It's nice to hear the reverence he shows towards these animals/insects/birds.

All in all, if you can get past the first few chapters and let Brown get the "fam" thing out of his system, it turns out to be very interesting reading.

I've gone from definitely wanting to give the book away to keeping it to delve back into at some point.

A solid 3.5-3.75 stars

[Allie Kleber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I really do need to remember that these nature-themed memoirs are still, you know, memoirs. This isn't a pop science book at all, even though I would really love to read one on the exact topic the title implies.

Brown details a lifelong fascination with "edge habitats" and urban wildlife/nature, including the house he and his second wife carefully designed for coexistence with their nonhuman neighbors in Austin, Texas. It's interspersed with quite a lot of philosophical statements about nature and humanity's place in it, some of which I found highly relatable and some which I found teeth-grittingly frustrating. Since it's his memoir, Brown is well within his rights to state his own feelings and opinions about "truth" and "real" life, etc, but his perspective can be awfully myopic. (Credit where it's due: he does sometimes incorporate the perspectives he's encountered from native people/traditions, and just as I was feeling inclined to compare him to Thoreau, he lambasted that gentleman's famously faux self-reliance.)

There's also a much larger dose of pessimism and negativity than is to my taste right now, though it's relatable and not unjustified. A streak of contrarianism also leads to uncomfortable moments where he appears to potentially endorse, or at least entertain, some very dubious biotechnological methods, for example - and to resist the idea of invasive species (without, at least textually, considering the ecological basis for said concept), at least until he starts actively working to craft a small ecosystem of his own. Which is of a piece with a general tendency to give more weight to his personal experiences than to anything more broadly evidence-based, much of the time.

I'm not sorry to have read it; Brown has some good ideas, and I really enjoyed visiting an ecological region I'm largely unfamiliar with, through his eyes. And sometimes I was nodding along emphatically with certain of his philosophical comments and his frustration with our species. All that said, I'd prefer something that engages much more deeply with actual scientific research.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The urban wild has a way of helping you see the truths you work to hide from yourself.”

Christopher Brown doesn’t live life the way you and I do. Exploring on foot the less visible and less traveled areas of Austin, he stumbles on a non-residential, post-industrial empty lot and decides to purchase and build a home on it. Interested in these edgelands, he uses this experience to challenge everything we know about the intersection of nature, the city, and human life.

“The psychogeographers understood a truth we rarely acknowledge: that the city is a machine designed to make you believe you are free, when its real aim is to control you…The landscapes we move through are manufactured ones, shaped by us, even when they are green. Maybe because the city knows that if we encountered an authentically wild and natural space, we might try to disappear into it.”

I’ve recently become somewhat of a hiking girly, tailoring the few vacations I take to traversing the land, and am always on the hunt for interesting trails in my area. I have a pretty intense anxiety about getting lost and going on hikes has mostly been a euphoric and all-around beneficial activity for my health and well-being (there was that one time I got lost in Oklahoma and thought I was going to die, but other than that, 10/10!).

Something that doesn’t sit right, though, is that as much as one can immerse themselves in nature, such trails and paths are still created by man, keeping you just one step away from Actual Natural Nature. Brown steps over that obstacle when he explores the hidden areas of Austin, taking his children and dogs on long walks that aren’t paved or trail-marked or meant for human occupation, really. And he discovers all kinds of creatures, insects, and plant life he wouldn’t have seen otherwise, many of which persevere through industrialization and other human interferences.

“None of the native wildflowers that appear in the drainage ditches and empty lots of our neighborhood grow from seed we spread or from any effort to encourage them. They have persisted despite our efforts, intentional or reckless, to eradicate them…their emergence every spring is a reminder that the erasure of the biodiverse wilderness that was here before American colonization was recent and incomplete.”

The book does a lot to decenter humans because Brown’s discoveries are a reminder that nature isn’t eradicated by human construction and capitalism. It’s often still there, and even outlasts whatever structures and lives we construct around and on top of it (“wild nature is always ready to come back, to adapt to the opportunities we give it, to reclaim the territory we destroy. But they also remind us how much biodiversity we have erased from the world.”). We don’t really give nature enough credit because we’re too busy celebrating human achievements, ignorant to the fact that wildlife achievements trump anything man can create.

I love the intersections of man and nature. On one of his walks, Brown stumbles onto an old Chevy Impala and returns to it day after day, watching it sit in the same place while nature changes around it. Plants grow, water rises and falls. The awe and the art of nature persisting, despite man’s intrusions.

“What we experience, alone in nature, is the opposite of solitude: the revelation of our connection and community with the nonhuman life and animate elemental energy that surrounds us, infuses us, and is us. It is best experienced without other people, because that’s when the channel opens widest.”

I was frustrated with the first portion of the book because it was just Brown exploring by himself. No interactions with other people, just his descriptions of wildlife findings on his excursions. Again, my frustration seems to be a result of a human-centric worldview. Why do we need people in the narrative for it to be interesting?! Thoreau wouldn’t think so!

In any case, this touches on some of my issues with the book. It’s not well organized, and you move from one chapter to the next not knowing where you’re going or what to expect. Brown goes on philosophical and socio-political tangents that I’d be more accepting of in a better-organized book. There is a loooooot to unpack in just the nature of Brown’s work and act of buying a lot not meant to live on, and maybe it’s just hard to do all that justice?

Admittedly, I went into this expecting more of an infrastructure slant…reader error on my part (the cover depicting more concrete than greenery and ‘Lots’ in the title was not giving ‘wildlife book’). This is a very nature-heavy book, and I recommend you heed the subtitle because it is definitely a lot of field notes. As in, a bit of a notebook dump of all the creatures and plants Brown came across on his weird walks. I don’t mind nature-heavy, but the endless descriptions are tedious, especially without accompanying pictures (the lack of color photos with captions seems like a huge missing piece from the book - I do recommend looking up photos of Brown’s house, a remarkable structure that seems to merge nature and human city life the way he wanted).

I’ve seen this referred to as a memoir and it is…decidedly not that. There is very little about Brown himself, other than necessary inclusions of his family that lives in the house with him. While I don’t wish to know much about his life, I wanted more about the human challenges of building a house like this, maybe obstacles they ran into (there was a matter of removing an industrial pipe and at some point, fighting not to displace a huge ant colony - I need more of these stories!). The house has a whole biome growing on the roof and a time-lapse account of that would have been cool to read. It gets interesting towards the end when Brown discusses the various creatures that more or less make themselves at home in the house (at which point I would nope TF out of there!). There is clearly a lot of privilege involved in being able to take on this kind of project, and I wanted to know more about all the times it wasn’t smooth sailing.

“It’s a strange process, whereby you ruin a place by moving to it. The term “gentrification” doesn’t really do it justice. It’s colonization. No matter how ethically you try to do it…By making a place “fit” for human habitation, you pave the way for others to follow.”

Brown is not preachy about his environmentally conscious life, and though he is clear about the ways capitalism and colonialism are destroying the planet, this isn’t meant to be a manifesto for changing your life to save the planet. You don’t have to live with arachnids, I promise. A very simple takeaway from this book is to open your eyes in your own surroundings, whether you’re walking downtown through a city or driving through your suburban neighborhood. The wildlife isn’t just in undeveloped spaces, it’s everywhere, and being more mindful and aware of it could help our understanding of nature and ourselves.

“In a world governed by human reason, we experience an abundance of surplus and a poverty of meaning. We believe ourselves to have banished magic and superstition from the world. But the magic is still there, all around us. The trick is learning to see it, for what it is…Even in the most urbanized human terrains, those wonders can still be found - most often at the edges where the pavement ends and the wild is allowed to express.”

[Alex Sarll]

Somehow, just from the title and cover, I'd assumed this was British nature writing - and that despite 'empty lot', now I think about it, being more of an American term. But the Americans... surely they don't need to write about edgelands? They have all those vast open spaces, don't they? It's only on this old, crowded little island that the Anglosphere needs to grub around in the neglected corners for some tiny sliver of wildness, right? Well, apparently not. Inevitably, this means that there are times when a UK reader who pays the least attention to this stuff will be tempted to gentle condescension: aw, bless, he's seen his first urban fox and he's treating it like a big deal! But it's always good to have people on side, and the differences are fascinating, right down to little stuff: they do have feral parakeets too, but a different species to England. More broadly, though, the wild that's itching to come back is different; under their crumbling light industrial units, the earth still remembers being a prairie, and there's a wider selection of decent-sized fauna ready to slip into the gaps too. On the human end of the equation, the myth of the frontier still lingers, its roots troubling and its persistence easily hijacked by the automobile industry among others - but also potentially useful to naturalists, if they can just find the right handholds. The overall effect is oddly optimistic, at least early on, a welcoming eye on the way the world reclaims even the territory humanity appears to have most thoroughly mucked up - albeit always with a countervailing awareness that capitalism, just as opportunistic as any weed though a good deal uglier, will often be ready to grab those derelict spaces right back. And as the book goes on that's exactly what happens, Brown's own wild house project part of the gravity that makes his neglected corner of Austin an appealing prospect after all, bringing with it the usual hideous developments that kill precisely what made an area attractive to them in the first place: "The signs promised the coming of a complex that called itself The Eclectic, even as they and you knew it would be anything but." The book tries to retain at least a note of bittersweet hope, talk about allying with your neighbours to fight City Hall - but it's too aware of how rigged the game is to feel like more than a faint gleam in the darkness. Still, at the same time as he has the eye of a lawyer (which he is) for the way systems twist to maintain control, he also has the knack of a science fiction writer (which he also is) for the powerful image; the husk of the Chevy in the hidden wetlands, in particular, feels like something out of a story by Jeff Vandermeer (who provides a blurb), offers a promise that one day some approximation of the wild will win this thing, with or without us.

Running in parallel with all this, though, there's a strand of what I'm pretty sure would have been played at least slightly for comedy in a British equivalent, but is possibly even funnier for being delivered with an entirely straight face. I think I was primed for this simply by his son being called Hugo, a name which in Britain I only ever encounter on absolutely terrible people, and yes, by his father's account this Hugo is very different, but parents always feel that way, don't they? Meaning I was already prepped to read on two levels before Brown started talking about the desire to make a home which breaks down the conventional Western division between inside and out, our space and nature's. A green roof is mandatory, of course - which entails shipping barrels of special sealant from halfway across the world (much to the interest of Homeland Security), heavy watering during a drought, and of course a flamethrower. Sharing the house with large ants is already a step more wildlife-friendly than I'm prepared to go, but that's as nothing compared to the immortal line "The architects who designed our house did not intend to create an optimal habitat for deadly serpents between the bedroom and the kitchen. But that's what they did." Most of us might rethink at that point, but not Brown, who even after a litany of other lethal housemates, and a reluctant admission that he might occasionally need to kill something posing an immediate threat to his dogs or infant daughter, nevertheless cheerily concludes "But the revelation that you can coexist with the full ambit of the food chain down in the postindustrial hobbit hole you have made your home is potent affirmation of the possibility of cultivating biodiverse life in a little corner of our urbanized world." To which, fond as I am of just vibing in the various semi-rewilded spaces around my own home, I can only reply, rather you than me, mate.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live in a suburban sprawl. People keep their grass nice and streets are lined with parked cars. And yet, we have seen skunk, raccoon, opossum, deer, turkey, vultures, hawks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Canada geese, Mallard duck, Killdeer, a multitude of bird species, and rabbits, along with the expected squirrels, rats, and chipmunks. Area parks have been home to coyote, which are regularly spotted in yards and along streets.

A block away is a park filled with oak trees. A few people leave a patch of yard go wild, with native flowers. Our yard regularly filled with violets in spring, and other flowers that thrived here before 1965 when our street was developed. A neighbor once told me that her son caught pollywogs in the swamp that was here.

A few more blocks away is a park that, in the late 50s, was noted as the best preserved site in the state for wildflowers. A mile down the road is a deer proofed Arboretum that is carpeted with trillium every spring.

You don’t have to move to the country to experience nature. And Christopher Brown shares the wonders he found in urban pockets of wastelands and alleys over decades. His memoir is a reminder of nature’s power to survive, to surprise us, and the joy and beauty that we can find all around us, if we only look.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Bruce Kellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you recognize your own experiences and perspective every few pages, you know you've come across a keeper. Brown writes about Austin's urban wild spaces and marvels at what he finds in empty lots, along abandoned railroad tracks, and hidden in decrepit industrial parks. By the end of the book, you're cheering him on as he fights city hall with his neighbors to enforce existing development codes and preserve as many wild spaces as he can in a rapidly growing city. Recently, I've enjoyed watching the foxes, armadillos, and other remarkable wildlife with my backyard trail camera. Brown takes our shared interest in urban fauna to the next level, cataloging and marveling at the animals he encounters along the Colorado River just beyond his backyard, in his neighborhood, and throughout the central city. He wrestles with important issues of land ownership, ecodiversity, development priorities, and his own personal relationship to his lived environment. Sometimes the book veers into memoir mode, when we could have been reading more about what he, his son, and his dog encounter on their morning walks. But that's a minor quibble with a book that will stay with me for a long time.

[Ally · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me something valuable which is a reminder to tune in to my surroundings even more than i already do! It also made me feel lucky to have a job where I get to spend a lot of time in urban “natural” spaces. However, this author was such a rich white man sometimes it annoyed me! Some of his word choices when discussing colonization felt off and also like sorry Mr. Big tech lawyer I don’t care about your divorce just write about Austin and it’s river and wildlife thanks!

[Mackenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

More memoir than explicit action steps but provides inspiration to rewild yourself.

Also, do yourself a favor and look up this man’s house because it’s beautiful.

[Katie Keeshen · Rating 3 out of 5]

eh…. It’s poorly organized and filled with a pretty dour tone that’s pretty difficult to get through. I don’t know if nature writers owe us hope but I personally do believe that a better world is possible and books that feel mired in a place of despair don’t do it for me. Some parts of it were fascinating and I did enjoy getting to explore a bit about a region of the country different from my own. Another disconnect for me came from not looking more closely at what the actual content of the book would be - this is very much not a “natural history of empty lots”, it’s a memoir blended with natural history that focused on one specific guy’s life. Which…. I mean there’s some segments that try to be broader but it doesn’t hit the balance of memoir and nature writing that something like the last fire season does. It feels very limited in scope.

Lastly, not a fan of the audiobook which is read by the author in this deeply disaffected and bored tone throughout.

[Livvy · Rating 2 out of 5]

okay here's the thing... I wanted to love this book. Unknowing to me before I started, the author also lives in Austin. I also feel a similar yearning for the outdoors in a cityscape. However, to a non-Austinite, the specific city references could be a little much and confusing and I didn't really learn anything about my own city...
I still will encourage others to give it a shot but I wouldn't be surprised if it fell flat for others too.

[Ryan Berger · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC

[Grant Markin]

I agree with so much of this book and enjoyed a lot of it, but honestly just felt too long. Essentially a collection of essays, I would have enjoyed it more if it felt more intentional with which topics each section focused on. Ended up feeling repetitive by the end. Still worth a read, and glad I picked it up.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love letter to the fringe.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I really liked it but I was a little surprised towards the end at the author’s sense of NIMBYism with new development. He bought an empty lot and made it a home, but then becomes an activist to prevent developers from building sorely needed high-density housing on top of abandoned commercial lots. I understand his concerns for nature, but he doesn’t really provide any rigorous reasoning to justify why his development is okay and those developments are not okay.

Also, as someone who truly lives in a city, I have seen photos of his house and property, and I feel a little ripped off that he describes it as urban. If you back into 20 acres of empty land and a section of river, I don’t really think you know what you’re talking about when it comes to urban nature. His insistence that nature is all around us falls a bit flat if you actually live in a downtown area.

Lastly, the descriptions of exploring edge lands were so tantalizing, I decided to get out more and see what I could find in my area. I quickly remembered why I don’t do that when I took a few steps into a right-of-way and discovered ample signs of human habitation. In Toronto, I can pretty much guarantee that any of these so-called interstitial wildernesses will in fact be someone’s home - tread with caution, not just as a show of respect but also for your own safety.

And lastly - I echo other reviewers, I want an actual pop science book about brownfields!

[Lauren M · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, look up pictures of the author's house because it is beautiful. I know he talks about how it was featured in some architectural magazines and stuff but he really doesn't do it justice despite it being a major part of the story. I'm not usually into super-modern architecture but I would make an exception for this beauty.

Anyway, I thought this was a really nice love letter to urban nature. I know I often fall in to the trap myself of thinking that anything that looks rural is automatically "good" nature-wise and that urban life is incompatible — something I've learned to question since living in Ireland where so much of the endless "green space" is pasture land for grazing livestock rather than a biodiverse emerald paradise (huge shoutout to the farmers who are putting the work in to change that for the better!) and the percentage of native forest pales in comparison to the Coillte-planted non-native Sitka spruce.

I enjoyed the author's wonder in finding the ways that nature has managed to find its place in concrete jungles. As they say, "life, uh, finds a way." It's a nice reminder that we all have the opportunity to connect and engage with nature, wherever we live. And that we should. I've only been to Austin once and I haven't spent much time in the south/southwest in general, so I'm mostly unfamiliar with the ecological region where the author lives, so I enjoyed his descriptions of the natural world he sees around him.

Obviously I also appreciated the call to action for not only engaging with nature and urban biodiversity but also protecting it. While the author's outlook is fairly pessimistic he does offer some hopeful messages in the conclusion about how nature can be safeguarded through its own legal rights and standings, giving some examples of cases in New Zealand and elsewhere in which rivers and mountains have been given legal personhood. The author's background is as a lawyer, and I found his explanations of these conclusions clear and informative, although as a layman they're probably not too actionable.

I listened to this on audiobook, narrated by the author.

[T S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really interested in this book and the material within was very interesting. It's just the organization wasn't there for me. I found it a bit scattershot it went from here to there and it didn't really have a cohesiveness that I was wanting until the very very end

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Brown is an attorney and author of several science fiction books, and this book covers his journey looking for a property in Austin, Texas to build a unique home that would be affordable and use land that was overlooked. He choses a property in East Austin and builds a home that is triangular shape, is partially underground, and has plants growing on the roof. Having lived in Austin for more than 40 years, I was amused by Brown's romanticism about living in this location, and his response to the wildlife that would appear near his home. Austin is full of wildlife including deer, coyotes, foxes, and birds including the owls that live on the University of Texas campus. I currently live near the Llano River on Lake LBJ, and we have deer as well as owls that hoot to either in the evening. Brown uses a lot of buzz like brownfield and intersectional space, but when he starts claiming that gentrification is a form of colonization, he has me laughing out loud. I heard this complaint both in Austin and Santa Fe, and its just a response to the lack of ability to accept change. Brown tries to spin the story like he is a struggling artist, but the house he build is valued at more than $2 million and is in a very sketchy neighborhood. Not the best investment decision.

[Melissa]

Vivid writing. A topic that is interesting because I remember being a kid and searching out these half wild places... going into the strip of woods (maybe 8 yards worth?) behind my house, eating the huckleberries that grew on the edge of the school playground even though it got me sent to timeout regularly, biking around and stopping to rest in these overgrown lots, encounters with deer, etc.
Nature really does do its best right up against our cities.
Also a topic that is difficult, because we can see how harmful and exploitative we continue to be as people, and the mass extinctions that we are causing.

[Patrick Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am absolutely floored by this book! Brown has a remarkable grasp of natural history, political and world history, nature and the animal kingdom, and climate - but is also a gifted enough writer to meld those disciplines into a fascinating examination of these places where different worlds overlap in ways most people overlook.

From an editorial standpoint it might appeal to a broader readership if Brown discussed the house and its details somewhere on the first half of the book. But for someone who is interested in cities, urban planning and politics, this is a truly unique piece of work.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And I had come to believe that places like that, where the worst of our industrial abuses of the Earth collide with wild nature, were where the essence of real life and the possibility of a better future could be found." He poetically articulates the kind of activity I have engaged in most of my life.

[Lanny Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall great audiobook. Sometimes a little repetitive but I will definitely look at nature in the cracks and margins of urban landscapes differently now

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was more of a memoir than I would have guessed from the title. It was good, but not the nature book about edgelands that I was looking forward to.

[Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool house man 😄 Unfortunately I didn’t like your tone 😔 It was Edward Abbey-esque 😨

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, a little purple, rambling, extremely moving. Feels like a one on one conversation with a very interesting person.

[Emma Demopoulos · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It’s possible as I think about this book and digest it, I’ll bump up my rating, but for I’ll let it sit here. I do think the author talks about environmentalism in an important way, and engages with racism, colonialism, and the structures that led us to our current path. There were a few parts where it lost me: one where the author insinuates that chupacabras are real, which I think may have been a joke (or an exaggeration for poetic effect) but it had me raising an eyebrow. Also, it didn’t recon with the fact that exploring unmarked, “abandoned” lands is dangerous, especially for women and bipoc. Much of my interactions with the book looked like that scene from True Detective where Woody Harrelson’s character says, “I need you to stop saying odd shit.”