Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape

by Barry Lopez (Editor)

Barry Lopez asked 45 poets and writers to define terms that describe America’s land and water forms — phrases like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The result is a major enterprise comprising over 850 descriptions, 100 line drawings, and 70 quotations from works by Willa Cather, Truman Capote, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and others. Carefully researched and exquisitely written by talents such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lan Samantha Chang, Robert Hass, Terry Tempest Williams, Jon Krakauer, Gretel Ehrlich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Antonya Nelson, Charles Frazier, Linda Hogan, and Bill McKibben, Home Ground is a striking composite portrait of the landscape. At the heart of this expansive work is a community of writers in service to their country, emphasizing a language that suggests the vastness and mystery that lie beyond our everyday words.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Reference, Poetry, Travel, Language, Environment

480 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2006

About the author

Barry Holstun Lopez is an American author, essayist, and fiction writer whose work is known for its environmental and social concerns.

Lopez has been described as "the nation's premier nature writer" by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his non-fiction, he frequently examines the relationship between human culture and physical landscape, while in his fiction he addresses issues of intimacy, ethics and identity.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will probably remain forever on my "currently reading" list as it resembles an almanac or set of encyclopedias...something I'll be referencing for the rest of my life, sometimes because I'm searching for the meaning of a regionally specific geographical term (coulee, arroyo, hillock) and other times because I'll pick it up randomly and be blown away by the sheer poetry of it all.

If you spend time out of doors then you should own this book. If you don't, but you enjoy good writing or are a writer yourself, you should own this book. It delves into the subtleties of our landscapes and forces you to look a little deeper at the natural world as you drive to the post office or take a hike.

[George Seaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book, especially for those who write about the land, about the American landscape. Those passionate about traveling rural America, and actually knowing what they're looking at, and reflecting upon those who have seen the same sites, and have written about what they've seen, well, this is an invaluable resource. Indeed, from the work--where authors and poets describe the American landscape, comes Lopez himself: "Whatever their styles and emphases, many American poets and novelists have recognized that something emotive abides in the land, and that it can be recognized and evoked even if it cannot be thoroughly plumbed. It is inaccessible to the analytic researcher, invisible to the ironist. To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features--the soughing of the wind across it, its upward reach against a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain. One must wait for the moment when the thing--the hill, the tarn, the lunette, the kiss tank, the caliche flat, the bejada--ceases to be a thing and becomes something that knows we are there."

[Kristen Gunther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do want to clarify that I have not read all of this cover to cover. That would be impossible, since I've owned it for less than 48 hours. However, I am totally enchanted with it -- the conceit, the execution, everything. The intro is wonderful, the quotes are wonderful, and every time you flip through a section it's like getting all these little gifts in the form of dispatches from X phenomenon, Y term, Z creek slang. A reference book in the best sense.

[Alyson Hagy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't finished HOME GOUND yet. It's a book to savor. But I know it's going to stay on a shelf in my study for a very long time. It connects my instincts about landscape to language. If gives context to words I've loved my whole life--cataract, playa, quagmire. It keeps the world both poetic and strange. A new encyclopedia for my imagination....

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perennially useful book. It presents itself as a kind of dictionary, but it is one of landscape terms, some of which are shared and basic, others of which -- and they are the most interesting -- are deeply local, almost private. I read this book 13 years ago (see review linked below) but I return to it several times a year

The intersection of language and landscape has always been central to the work of Barry Lopez. How do we — particularly we non-Native North Americans — imagine the landscape we have come to inhabit, and where do we find the words that help us understand it and that might be essential for us to live in it? This was a central preoccupation of Lopez's prize-winning 1986 book Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, but the question even animated his best-selling children's book Crow and Weasel (illustrated by Ann Arbor's Tom Pohrt). The question gains urgency when Lopez convinces us that perhaps we have been so cavalier in the exploitation of our landscape because our language hasn't allowed us to make the necessary imaginative connection. Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape is Lopez's latest effort to broaden his and our understanding. Here he has asked some forty-five writers (among them Robert Hass, Barbara Kingsolver, Jon Krakauer, and Terry Tempest Williams) to define the local and regional terms for landscape phenomena that they know or were asked to discover. These are the words that Lopez says come "out of the natural convergence of human culture with a particular place." Some of these are terms that are indeed used formally (William Kittredge contributed kame: "a hummocky deposit at the front of an ice sheet"), while others are rich with the smell and feel of local usage (Franklin Burroughs's gunk hole: "In coastal New England [it] is a small, out-of-the-way harbor or a nearly unnavigable shallow cove or channel"). The words come from all the various languages of Europe, but also from Asia (boondocks, Pattiann Rogers points out, comes from the Tagalog for "mountain"), and certainly from the various Native American languages (Robert Morgan notes, "Bayou is a word that sounds French but is in fact of Choctaw origin"). Some of them name features that we have imposed on the landscape, but most name the things we found here, features of the land that rose into our imaginations. That is why Lopez asked writers to create his entries:

. . . many American poets and novelists have recognized that something emotive abides in the land, and that it can be recognized and evoked even if it cannot be thoroughly plumbed. It is inaccessible to the analytic researcher, invisible to the ironist. To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features. . . .

Home Ground looks at first like a dictionary of American landscape terms, albeit one with patches of beautiful writing and genuine wit. As we explore it, the book gains something that might be a kind of political importance. Past that, it reaches literature, and then moves very close to the spiritual. It already feels like an essential part of my library.



https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful surprise. It is essentially a dictionary of landscape-related terms, words with specialized geological, biological, or land use meanings. How exciting can it be to read a dictionary? But the 45 contributors draw from the pantheon of America's best writers and nature writers, including Gretel Erlich, Jan DeBlieu, Charles Frazier, Barbara Kingsolver, Ellen Meloy, Luis Alberto Urrea, and a bunch of other folks I didn't know. The definitions are accurate, but also grounded in place and in literature, incorporating references to poetry, literature, offbeat history, and regional expressions. The entries are necessarily compact, but reflect the distinctive voices of their authors, making the book as a whole a kaleidoscope of lapidary style. The best way to read this book, I'm finding, is to open it at random, meet a reference to something new and beautiful, and jump online to explore it further. While I'm reading a library hardcopy - and love it enough to have bought my own to keep around to reread - the book would probably translate well to digital format, even the lovely, spare pen and ink illustrations by Molly O'Halloran.

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uh boy. I really have no idea how to rate or even shelve this one.

I admit that I didn't read all of it. It's just not the kind of book you can sit down and read through. I thought it might be like MacFarland's Landmarks. Nope. It's almost as good as Landmarks in some ways, but very different format and style. It's more...encyclopedic? Dictionary-ish? List-y? Let's go with "reference book." It's a reference book full of wonderful descriptions of landscapes and things that make up landscapes. All kind of geologic, geographic, and habitat here as described by many, many writers from many different genres. It's geek week for bibliophiles and geography nerds. It's wonderful, but it simply isn't something to cozy up to while sipping cocoa/coffee/bourbon/all three in the same mug.

Also, I had the library hard copy edition, which is bulky, weighs half a ton and has preposterously small, hard to read font given the size of the page available. So, no, not a format conducive to marathon reading, although the weirdly short loan period dictated by my library for this book doesn't allow for stretching things out. (What's with that, Local Library Gods? You usually give me three weeks.)

So, yeah, I admit it, I skimmed and cherry-picked this one. I thought it was good enough that my inner geography nerd wants to spring for the e-book version--and I pray that someone with some sense did the formatting because otherwise all those lovely sidebars and illustrations will be a navigation nightmare.

For a "sit and enjoy," I can't rate it more than two stars. For a reference book, it's a solid four stars. If I were a writer, I'd definitely want this for a reference/inspiration shelf and might give it five stars.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per FTC guidelines, I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads giveaways.

I don't typically review books that I've not read all the way through, but this is certainly an exception worth making. This is basically an encyclopedia of geographic terms described by the literary world. As such, it's not the sort of book you sit down and read cover to cover. It is, however, entertaining to the point that you find yourself wandering across the pages, reading each entry as though it were something you were passing on the highway or in the woods. Not only is each entry accurate, it is created by a person with a literary background, and often times contains a quote from another literary source as an example. As a geographer, I found this "nearly pocket-size" guide to be fascinating.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whatever their styles and emphases, many American poets and novelists have recognized that something emotive abides in the land, and that it can be recognized and evoked. It is inaccessible to the analytic researcher, invisible to the ironist. To hear the numinous call or voice of a place, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features- the soughing of the wind across it, its upward reach against a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain. One must wait for the moment when it ceases to be a thing and becomes something that knows we are there. Barry Lopez in Intro

What a treasure trove of words about the land, reminding me how much I love words and I love landscape, and a way to read a dictionary of the land without having to read a dictionary. Some were poetic, some luminous, some just interesting, but such a magnum opus of work from the editors, a fitting memorial to Barry Lopez, and almost like a book of prayers.

Several years ago I walked into the office of a man named Jim Kari, at the time the director of the Native Language Center at the University of Alaska, and was brought up short by a striking contrast posted on his wall. Arranged side by side above his desk were a pair of identical Unites State geological Survey maps showing the topography of a section of south-central Alaska’s Susitna Valley. The map on the left bristled with more than a hundred colored pushpins, each bearing a tiny paper flag with the Deni’ina place-name on it, the Athabaskan language spoken but the indigenous people still living there. Fewer than a dozen names appeared in English on the right…The point, that a region hardly known to its relatively new landlords is, in fact, minutely and extensively know to its long-term residents, dramatizes a truism about belonging, about intimacy with a place. The Deni’ina words had grown up over many centuries, out of the natural convergence of human culture with a particular place. Barry Lopez

Acequias, or irrigation ditches, are found throughout the American Southwest. The word comes from the Arabic al-saqiya, which means “water conduit” (not necessarily for irrigation). The Moors, who inhabited Spain for nearly 800 years, until 1492, were deeply versed in survival techniques from North African deserts and introduced methods for water management to the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish colonists to the arid Southwest brought that with them and merged with equally elaborate systems devised by pre-Colombian cultures like the Hohokam of central Arizona. Conger Beasley, Jr.

Water, the treasure of Earth, covers two-thirds of the planet. Some is visible, but much lies beneath the surface, hidden waters travelling through sand, rock, and gravel. These hidden seas are created in part when rain and snow trickle downward. Sometimes rivers dive deep and enter holds of water beneath even parched ground. These stores of water are called aquifers. The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest on the continent, reaching from the plains of South Dakota to Texas. The aquifer is declining by an average of 1.74 feet a year-over one million acre-feet- so excessive is the demand for agricultural and domestic purposes. In places in this region, the land is actually collapsing. Native American people of several tribal traditions have long said prairie dogs “call the rain.” Like all Earth’s waters, aquifers rise and fall with the moon, and as It turns out, this slow, strong pumping in the aquifers below prairie dog towns is what draws rainwater into those aquifers, replenishing them. When prairie dog holes have ceased to exist, the soil has become so hard rain can no longer reach the aquifer. The rain in fact has disappeared.

Archipelago, of Greek and Italian origin, is now somewhat loosely applied to with or both a body of sea that contains multiple islands and to the islands themselves. Archipelagoes are often, but not always, in proximity to a mainland, as with the Arctic Islands, Alexander Archipelago, and the Florida Keys. Because of the complexity of currents about the island the varying sizes and upper elevations of the islands, and commonly the abundance of shallows, bays, inlets, and estuaries along the coastlines, the islands in general function as rich nutrient sources and as nesting and resting places for migratory waterbirds. Seen from the air, archipelagoes invite contemplation of fractals, amplifying into ever greater detail. John Keeble

Bayou is a word that sounds French but is in fact of Choctaw origin, deriving from bayuk meaning “small stream.” In recorded usage since 1818, bayou most commonly refers to marshy offshoots and overflowings of rivers and lakes in the delta of Louisiana and the Gulf area…the word can be said to refer to any slow water in a marshy area, if not dead water perhaps sleeping water, or dreaming water. Robert Morgan

Beach cusps are individual crescent arcs in a sequence of linked sandbars at the edge of the beach addressed by waves from two directions. An indentation of sand expressing the fanning force of water. Like other sand features like shoals and spits, the ephemeral beach cusp represents a visible expression of the less visible. At the ocean’s edge, a series of broad, hidden vectors based in prevailing winds, ocean currents, and long swells localized as waves are all expressed in a language available to human perception- a series of rhythmic shapes in beach sand, where water’s deft knife scallops the coast. Kim Stafford

Standing against a sheer face of red rock one thousand feet high; kneeling in a cave dwelling two thousand years old; watching as a million bats stream from the mouth of caverns into the purple dusk- these nowhere and notimes are the only home we have. Kathleen Harrison

Ice connects land to land, land to sea, sea to air, air to land, ice to ice…out of simple ice crystals is constructed a vast hierarchy of ice masses, ice terraces, and ice structures. Stephen Pyne

Like every other life form, ice, too, has a life cycle- it is created, it grows, begins to decay, then disintegrates, falling back into the water from when it was born. Candle ice, or candled ice, is a type of decaying sheet ice named so because it forms in its interior clusters of vertical prisms resembling delicate, waxy tapers. Gretel Ehrlich

Canyon is a general term with a heady array of specifics. It may be as “simple” as a cleft between steep walls or as complex as the Grand Canyon- miles across, layered in their depths like ragged, inverted cordilleras. In the Southwest, canyons are assertive. Aridity sharpens their bones. Rivers may run through them- open arteries in a carapace of rock; others flow only with blow-sand and chokestones. Canyons come blind, box, side, slot, hidden. They stair down and pour off. They gooseneck. They hang. The Hopi word posovi means “canyon corners,” as if one quirky, prismatic facet at a time were all you could manage in this seemingly irrational geography of space and rock. Ellen Meloy

Alaskan painter Toni Onley once described and Arctic shoreline as “great blocks of ice thrown up in confusion- like a Cubist’s dream.” Similarly, standing on the Beaufort Sea’s shore, Annie Dillard contemplated a “mess of ice…standing floes, ice sheets upright, tilted, frozen together and jammed, which extended out to the horizon.” This chaos curs at the floe or flaw edge where pack ice, driven by wind and current, rips and shreds the seaward edge of an otherwise stable, flat, often gently nubbled, sometimes vast sheet of sea ice anchored to the land. Richard Nelson In “Shadow of the Hunter” writes: “Finally the pack pressed in against the fast ice, and huge ridges began grinding together. The sight was awesome, even for men who had seen it many times before. Colossal boulders of ice turned and fell, sending shivers through the floes. Low rumblings gave choice to the incredible power before them, as faces of ice mountains met in slow, pulverizing collisions.” Fast ice may or may not be separated from pack ice (the perpetually moving floes of annual and multi year polar ice) by stretches of open water, called flaw leads. Sea mammals associate with pack ice- seals, bowhead whales, belugas, and narwhals congregate to breathe. Here too, is where polar bears, drawn to the floe edge often come ashore across the reach of fast ice. Eva Saulitis

A freshet is a species of flood- a relatively sudden surge, brought on by heavy rainfall, rapid snowmelt, or the two together, that send streams and small rivers over their banks. Spate and flush suggest the same phenomenon. Around the term’s usage area- chiefly the mountainous Atlantic stats and the northern tier of the United States- the definition varies locally. John Daniel

And my heart rose like a freshet,
And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
Till I felt the earth once more. Edna St. Vincent Millay

The aquifer beneath south Florida is called the Biscayne Aquifer and is one of the most permeable in the world. Rainwater entering it is rapidly discharged into surrounding coastal waters. The Florida Keys consist, for the most part, of porous limestone, remnants of an ancient coral reef. However, on the large islands of the Lower Keys, Key West, Sugarloaf, Big Pine, a thick cap rock of fine-grained calcium carbonate retains water in thin lenses that actually float on top of the heavier underlying seawater. The size and extent of the lenses vary depending on the elevation of the key beyond the reach of the tides, the season, and of course, the amount of rainfall. Freshwater lenses are of maximum size and freshness during the late summer wet season and are closer, at that time, to the surface. It is highly beneficial for wildlife but any large scale pumping for human uses can quickly exhaust it, and saline water could be rapidly drawn into the aquifer. Joy Williams

Traveling minister James Smith’s journal, 1792: “We started just as the sun began to gild the tops of the high mountains. We ascended Cumberland Mountain, from the top of which the bright luminary of day appeared to our view is all rising glory; the mists dispersed and the floating clouds hasted away at his appearing at the Cumberland Gap.” Gap appears in the literature as a synonym for pass, and is often used interchangeably with gorge. Water gaps are gaps near a mountain’s base though which water passes. And here we get close to what a gap actually is: the course of a stream, one that cut down into the land as the land rose or one that’s still a waterway, still cutting down through an older land feature. It may seem reasonable to assert that gap is, then a regional colloquialism for pass; however, a gap is clearly narrower than most passes and related to water- closer in nature but not as daunting as, a gorge. Note: if a watercourse does not complete its cut, or the land rises and the water diverts, the subsequent opening in the hills is known as a wind gap. Luis Alberto Urrea

In the mid-eighteenth century, inspired by sojourns through the Alps, aesthetes and Romantics embraced the notion of the Sublime, thereby popularizing a radically new way of regarding wilderness. High, imposing mountains still inspired fear and disquietude, as they always had, but the fear was now permeated with transcendent awe. Suddenly the great peaks and glaciers of France and Switzerland were thought to be beautiful. Their breathtaking features inspired geomorphological terms in wide use such as gendarme (guard) for lofty rock towers, also known as pulpits, spires, minarets, needles and aiguilles (french for needles).

A glade is a small, open, light-filled space, usually in a forest or woods. When Willa Cather described an “open glad like an amphitheatre,” she was responding to the feeling of release that Anglo settlers experienced in their early encounters with the American plains. But glade can also describe a feeling of enclosure and safety, respite from a forest’s dark impenetrability. In New England, a glade can be a patch of open water on a frozen lake or river. In sunlight this kind of water-glade will ripple with a chiaroscuro as busy as any leaf-dappled glade. Now glades are inextricably linked with the Everglades of Florida, and as such this speaks to the quality of endlessness that abides in light and open space. Finally, by the time of the Victorian and Romantic poets, glade had become a literary device that evoked an ideal place, a “bower” as Wordsworth wrote, or was often employed as a noun for such adjectives as silent, rocky, forest, swampy, and bee-loud. Michael Collier

That rivers and streams seldom flow (naturally) in straight lines is a gift of beauty. Otherwise we would not have canyons that bear the shaped of moving water. The river’s meandering pattern forms sinuous, sweeping bends. Goosenecks are meanders so tight in succession that their bowed nearly meet one another. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River in southern Utah are a classic canyon complex of deeply entrenched meanders. Ellen Meloy

All my life i had imagined this terrain, a country as much within me as without, a landscape that seemed almost of my own making… Peering outside through the open shade, i saw a world outside that seemed no different from the one i carried within…. Mary Morris

Of all mapmakers imaginary lines inscribed on North America, the most famous is the one curling north and south to the poles, one hundred degrees west of Greenwich, England. In the US, the hundredth meridian runs from the Dakotas through Nebraska, Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle, and the heart of Texas. It became famous after John Wesley Powell, explorer of the Grand Canyon, observed that this meridian roughly coincides with the twenty-inch annual rainfall line: land to the east receives more than twenty inches, enough to grow crops without irrigation, while nearly all land to the west receives less and thus requires irrigation. We should therefore be cautious, Powell argued, in how we settle this arid region beyond the hundredth meridian. Because this caution has been flagrantly ignored, wester aquifers, such as the Ogalalla are being rapidly depleted,and rivers such as the Colorado are being drained. Scott Russel Sanders

Nineteenth century settlers were astounded by the grandeur of prairies on the western plains, particular those christened looking-glass prairies for their elegant curing shapes and their surprising reflectivity. These gleaming prairies wetlands (circumnavigated by prairie schooners)- great shallow basins of sedges, reflecting sky and landscape and nurturing fish, waterfowl, and other animals- were initiating by glaciers retreating from the central lowlands, which stretch west from the Mississippi River across the Great Plains. Donna Seaman
November 11, 1894: When we reached the top of the mesa, the air was purely electric, the sky blue, the wind coming from a long way unencumbered and i felt the elevation in my blood and also in my spirits; there was a rising feeling, having nothing to do with industry or legwork, but rather with the lightness of air. Elizabeth Crook

The Spanish word monte can mean mountain, woodland, or forest. But for Mexico’s indigenous peoples, and for las mestizaje, those of mixed European and Indian blood, the word carries an intrinsic spiritual significance, for the monte is not simply a place of corporeal substance but also a site of metaphysical renewal. Whether atop a mountain or beneath a sheltering shade of myriad trees, the monte also possessed religious and ethereal symbols and signs- a power, it seemed, creating a sanctuary that aided in directing one’s life. Arturo Longoria

A mountain is is land that rises above the surrounding plain. But it is not simply higher than a hill; the very word mountain also implies a brand of majesty. On a mountain, normal processes are magnified- their steep slopes for instance, mean streams flow faster and carry more rock, accelerating erosion. Mountains can create their own weather, as clouds release their cargo on the windward side. And they carry their own heightened psychological charge as well. Though by conventional measurement, the planet’s tallest mountains are in Asia, Hawai’i can claim its most massive: measuring from the seafloor, the Mauna Loa volcano is the “largest projected landmass between Mars and the Sun. Bill McKibben

A peak is a high, sharp point. By comparison, a summit is an extremity, but not necessarily a sharp point, on a hill or mountain. While peaks are often rocky horns and/or pinnacles, summits can be found at the quite unspectacular on a loaf of a mountain. Thus, although a mountain often only has one summit, which may resemble a peak, a mountain may also have multiple peaks and summits, even while only having gone highest point. There are a large number of peaks in the Teton Range, but the Grand Teton is the summit. Hopi Indians call the San Francisco Peaks a “cloud house” where gods live. Taos Pueblo is oriented to sacred mountains.Tibetan Buddhists regard peaks and summits as centers of sacred energy. William Kittredge

[Susan Eubank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here are my favorite words and their definition writers. Some of these and others were read and became poetry at the Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion on Wednesday, May 18, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. PDT .

Witness tree by Robert Michael Pyle
Wrack line by Jeffery Renard Allen
Vein by Terry Tempest Williams
Unconformity by Kim Stafford
Uintah structure by Terry Tempest Williams
U-shaped Valley by Gretel Ehrlich
Tule land by Robert Morgan
Tule by Pattiann Rogers
Tsegi by Arthur Sze
Tree tip pit by Gretel Ehrlich
Travertine by Ellen Meloy
Tombolo by Bill McKibben
Tank by Stephen Graham Jones
Talus by Ellen Meloy
Stream by Gretel Ehrlich
Stratovolcano by John Daniel
Singing Sand by D. J. Waldie
Sierra by Stephen Graham Jones
Sidehill by Mary Swander
Shore by Luis Alberto Urrea
Shinnery by Barry Lopez
Section by D. J. Waldie
Scabland by Pattiann Rogers
Sand waves by Ellen Meloy
Salt lake by Terry Tempest Williams
Sag by Michael Collier
Refugium by Barry Lopez
Raft by Robert Michael Pyle
Pouroff by Pattiann Rogers
Postpile by Stephen Graham Jones
Pool and riffle by William DeBuys
Plain by Mary Swander
Pit by Jeffery Renard Allen
Peninsula by Carolyn Servid
Peak by William Kittredge
Patch by Arthur Sze
Park by Scott Russell Sanders
Painted hill by John Daniel
Misfit stream by Carolyn Servid
Midden by Terry Tempest Williams
Mesa by Barbara Kingsolver
Meander by William DeBuys
Marsh by Bill McKibben
Marine terrace by Linda Hogan
Lava field by John Daniel
Imbricated rock by Ellen Meloy
Ice dam by John Daniel
Huerfano by Luis Alberto Urrea
Gully by Elizabeth Cox
Gulch by Elizabeth Cox
Groundwater by Donna Seaman
Exotic stream by Jeffery Renard Allen
Ecotone by William DeBuys
Dust dome Jeffery Renard Allen
Dune by D.J. Waldie
Dugway by Kim Barnes
Dry fall by Joy Williams
Draw by Conger Beasley, Jr.
Desert varnish by William DeBuys
Dead ice by D. J. Waldie
Continental divide by Conger Beasley, Jr.
Colina by D. J. Waldie
Chaparral by Robert Hass
Cascade by John Daniel
Canyon by Ellen Meloy
Bench by Terry Tempest Williams
Basin and range by William Kittredge
Bar ditch by Stephen Graham Jones
Acequia by Conger Beasley, Jr.

[Bill Yake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished working my way through this valuable volume. Shelved it to the reference section just to the lower-left of the computer. 500 pp. of micro-essays on terms (geological, geographical, glacial, agricultural, littoral, etc. etc.) for features of land, water, and ice by 45 fine writers including Scott Russell Sanders, Pattiann Rogers, Kim Stafford, Bob Pyle, Robert Morgan Jon Krakauer, Wm. Kittredge, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Hass, Gretel Ehrlich, Bill McKibben, Linda Hogan, Terry Tempest Williams, and the like. Entries from fire-line and finger-rafted ice to hanging glacier and hedgerow, zigzag rocks and tornado alley. As the blurb by Michael Pollan says, “An unexpected page turner.”

[Beckie Elgin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Christmas gift from my daughter, Home Ground is a book I'll put to good use as long as I'm a writer and a connoisseur of nature. What an education, terms related to the environment that were new to me, as well as ones I knew but gained a deeper knowledge of. I loved that the entries came from dozens of writers, John Daniel, William Kittridge and Kim Barnes, to name a few. While I'm sure Debra Gwartney and Barry Lopez worked long and hard to put this text together, I imagine they had a great time too, calling on the wisdom of fellow writers and discovering parts of the landscape that may have been new to them as well.

[Jason Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book for those who love land. Not just the majestic peaks of high mountain ranges or grandeur of deep western canyons, but also the subtle gradations of the seemingly mundane. It is a book for those who pay attention to the world around them. "Home Ground" is structured as a glossary, but is not strictly a reference work; there is a enough scientific and technical information to satisfy, but the beauty of this work are the literary and cultural references sprinkled throughout that breathe life into each entry. This is a work to be savored and meditated upon, wherever your home ground is.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't read straight through and didn't read the whole thing. This book is more of a life project in all good senses. The entries, all by writers and naturalists, are lyric testament to how knowing the words sharpens vision.

[Sandra Poucher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly enlightening and very interesting collection and description of terminology of the American landscape. For people seeking to define, describe, and understand the land to which they belong or from whence they developed, this book is invaluable.

[Scott Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book bringing a new appreciation for how vocabulary and landscapes can elevate one another. And it is super fun and enjoyable to boot!

[Jillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. The concept, the execution, and the content are brilliantly done. Buy this book. You'll want to pick it up again and again.

[Jen]

In a month, I'd only made it 30 pages in. I'd like to read it someday, but right now is not the time. I really was enjoying the snippets I was getting though.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for nerds who love the outdoors and words.

If nuances in words are fun for you, and you enjoy reading about the outdoors, you may really like this.

If you don't like both of those things, this book will bore you to no end.

[Lorrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its an encyclopedia of land terms. Although i did not agree with all of them, this helped me look at how I can use language to better describe the beautiful,world around me. “I’m not okay, but i will be”.

[Miguette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book to leaf through again and again and again. Really happy to have this at hand. A keeper

[East To · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the names here - they read like a poem. Angostura to Zanja...

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great reference book.

[Patricia E. Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of words used to describe the American landscape as defined by a group of writers.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be a long time reading this book. It's more of a reference book or a book in which to take a stroll and get lost wherever you like. I love it!!

[D.W. Udell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved taking a tour through America by using the vernacular and terminology locals used about their landscapes and natural settings. Beautiful and descriptive.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

As handy a reference book as I know. Here, authors and nature writers gather together to examine the language of the American landscape. The definitions (often with illustrations) explore both the etymology and application of the word according to writers who know their regions well. It's especially useful now as I'm rereading All the Pretty Horses, and I can't imagine finding more useful definitions of cienaga or bolson or any of the myriad terms McCarthy uses to describe the land of the Southwest.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently reading/(always reading?) Home Ground is a compendium of geographical references compiled by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney with input form ~40 incisive contemporary authors. Although it reads much like a geo-dictionary with a literary flavor... the next time you hear a reference to "a sense of place" turn to HomeGround to dig deeper into the physical contours that helped create that sense for the author... contributors include Kim Barnes, William Kittredge, Charles Frazier, Luis Alberto Urrea et al.

[Rafe · Rating 5 out of 5]

We found this book by accident, roaming a bookstore, as one does. I'm so glad we picked it up. Each entry is a type of geographic or geological terminology -- esker, delta, moraine, etc. -- but instead of the book being a dry dictionary, the editors asked writers to create definitions based on their own responses to, and knowledges of, the words. The result is gorgeous, both a brilliant reference book and a reminder of the ineffable link between language and land. I will be "currently reading" for a long while because each entry requires me to sit and soak it up.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another great resource and browsing book...a dictionary of words describing the land. All the entries were written by nature writers. So you get beautifully crafted sentences by, say, Barbara Kingsolver. And with Barry Lopez as one of the editors, need I say more?

My only quibble: I wish the actual book was smaller and more intimate. For a dictionary the text seems personal to me, and shouldn't be in such a large volume.