An intimate discussion of the landscape of the American West and the challenges of ownership, environmental crises, and greed. Kittredge describes his contradictory relationship to the spare and often unforgiving western landscape through these luminous essays that move from the personal to the political. Kittredge is intimately connected with the West through his family's Oregon cattle ranch, and he has watched his region decline for many decades now. These essays directly address environmental concerns, and the problematic mythologies of the western experience.