Book excerpt: Through personal narratives that float between memoir and meditation, nature essay and adventure story. She travels to a remote spot in Kenya, where thousands of flamingos "encircle the geysers and carpet the glassy lake." In the rainforests of Dominica, she marvels at parrots as "bits of green forest tipped with scarlet and given wing." But always she returns to the intimate landscapes of her home in the Rocky Mountain and desert West. There, a trudge into the Grand.