Listen to the Land: Conservation Conversations

Inspired by years of talking with farmers, foragers, loggers, tribal activists, seed savers, fishers, railroaders, and nature lovers of all stripes, Dennis Boyer has created in Listen to the Land a fascinating communal conversation that invites readers to ponder their own roles in grassroots environmentalism. The nearly fifty voices that Boyer recreates here cross genders, generations, and geography. They include an Ojibwe leader contemplating nuclear waste, a houseboat dweller, a woman sharing her skills in gathering edible plants, a caboose-tender, a Milwaukeean fighting urban blight-even a recluse who shoots out streetlights.
Each of the extraordinarily varied perspectives that Boyer recreates here considers the question, How do I interact with the Earth? Each has something important to say that expands our understanding of conservation and environmentalism. Listen to the Land encourages you to read a conversation or two and then go outside and start one of your own.

Dennis Boyer is author of many books, including Prairie Whistles: Tales of Midwest Railroading, and coeditor of A Place to Which We Belong: Wisconsin Writers on Wisconsin Landscapes. He lives on a farm near Dodgeville and is a lawyer active in conservation groups.