Our complex relationship to the natural world is revealed through the unusual lives and deaths of a trapper and a beekeeper.

Susan Brind Morrow brings her singular sensibility as a classicist and linguist to this strikingly original reflection on the fine but resilient threads that bind humans to the natural world.

Prompted by the emotional loss of two friends, one a trapper and one a beekeeper, Susan Brind Morrow explores the implications of their very different relationships to the natural world. Ultimately, these two men are a touchstone for a memoir of the land itself, the rich soil of the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York.

Morrow's richly evocative writing traces the connections among various realms of culture and nature, time and language and jolts us into thinking anew about our profound relationship to the natural world.