A Yard Long: A Natural and Cultural History of One Small Yard

"A marvelous and widely informed guide to slowing down and paying attention. All the wonders, tangles, laughter, and strangenesses of place and critter reveal themselves before the keen and roving light of Sampson's curiosity." -Derek Sheffield, co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and poetry editor of Terrain.org

"From chaotic garden to busy bird feeder, wormy compost pile to a cutbank gone wild, Sampson reminds us that no matter where we live, the world is teeming with life. This book will inspire readers to take a closer look at their own backyards."
-Elise Atchison, author of Crazy Mountain (winner of the High Plains Book Award, and the Eludia Award)

From the pages: "I resolved to stop and smell the roses, see the mammals, hear the birds, feel the sun's warmth and the wind's chill. I would remember the invertebrates."

On a small urban lot in North Central Washington state, Sampson searches for "the universe in a grain of sand." She searches amidst the regional geology formed by cataclysms of unimaginable magnitude, including volcanic eruptions, mountains thrust up by shifting tectonic plates, carving by ice caps, and the inundation of floods after the disappearance of that ice. From the finite to the infinite, she explores the interconnectedness of subterranean insects, weeds and edible plants, lizards, birds, fungus, mammals and weather. Glowing with words of marvel and appreciation for the variety and persistence of life, and its relationship to organisms from around the world, like moss spores carried in the river of air, all observed in a small plot of land.