Chris answers this fundamental question of our time initially by listening lovingly to rivers and the land they pulse through in his adopted home of Montana. Transplants from the post-industrial Midwest, he and his partner, Mary, assemble a life based precariously on her income as a schoolteacher, his as a poet and fly-fishing guide. Before long, their first child arrives, followed soon after by two more, all free beings in whom flourishes an essential kind of knowing [], whose capacity for wonder may be the beacon by which we see ourselves through this dark epoch. And around the young family circles a community of friendsriver-rafting guides and conservationists, climbers and wildlife biologistswho seek to cultivate a way of living in place that moves beyond the mythologized West of appropriation and extraction.. 5.5×8.5 inches, 304 pgs.