Throughout this journal, Gruchow’s voice is one of calm reassurance. Even during the rising tension of a thunderstorm, when “[s]ilence came over the land … like the taking of a sharp breath,” his words reflect an admiration for the laws of nature. The effect, of course, is that we are constantly reminded of our place in the natural world.

Throughout this journal, Gruchow’s voice is one of calm reassurance. Even during the rising tension of a thunderstorm … his words reflect an admiration for the laws of nature.

Mankind is not, the author likes to point out, any more important to the workings of the planet than the dragonfly, the worm, or the weather systems enveloping the earth. The truth is “the varieties of life [are put] into mutually exclusive but complementary places.” Perhaps this is why Gruchow regularly uses passive constructions in his sentences, to remind us of the repetitive cycles of nature. So, for instance, he will give an overview of a season or a description of a particular place by saying: “The sap was running again … the cattails were sprouting” or “The prairie beans were developing fruits; the ground plums were showing the first tinges of rose…” A contemporary writer, by comparison, would be more likely to use the simple past tense (“The sap ran again … the cattails sprouted,” or “The prairie beans developed fruit, the ground plums showed the first tinge of rose”), wanting to engage readers in the immediate moment. But this particularity of style is one that, again, prods us to recognize the continual processes of nature.

In the end, Gruchow’s journal enchanted me as much as the land he writes about. Just as he says “There is never any sharp line between one season and the next,” his book carried me through the year in a long dissolve of dreaming about the wide expanse of prairies. When finally he writes that “I felt at ease … my sense of distance [come] back,” I felt my own reluctance to close the book and return to a hurried west coast life.