Not just any land

"Though he'd lived in Iowa all his life, the allure of the prairie had somehow eluded John Price - until, after a catastrophic flood, a brief glimpse of native wildlife suddenly brought his surroundings home to him. Not Just Any Land is a memoir of Price's rediscovery of his place in the American landscape and of his search for a new relationship to the life of the prairie - that once immense and beautiful wilderness of grass now so depleted and damaged as to test even the deepest faith." "Price's journey toward a conscious commitment to place takes him to some of America's largest remaining grasslands and brings him face to face with a troubling, but also hopeful personal and environmental legacy. It also leads him through the region's literature and into conversations with contemporary nature writers - Linda Hasselstrom, Dan O'Brien William Least Heat-Moon, and Mary Swander - who have devoted themselves to living in, writing about, and restoring the grasslands. Among these authors Price observes how a commitment to the land can spring from diverse sources, for instance, the generational weight of a family ranch, the rites of wildlife preservation, the "deep maps" of ancestral, me