It starts with the first ski race down the mountain, but quickly the Guide to the Western Slope and the Outlying Areas heads off into the woods, seeking the wisdom that can be found in the spaces between the trees. The Guide to these woods may somehow be encoded between the spaces that wind between the sentences and words in this remarkable and unique book, the same way a back country ski runs through the spaces between the trees. Lebovitz takes the reader deep into the Western Slope, a mythical land that spends the winter buried in snow, bringing back these essay-prose poems as proof of both sweeping majesty and intimate charm.