W. W. Norton & Company
I was lucky enough to hear Pam Houston read when she was on a book tour for “Contents May Have Shifted,” a novel she described as, when asked how much of it was autobiographical, 90% Pam. “Deep Creek,” her new memoir about the life she created on her 120-acre homestead in the mountains of Colorado, is 100% Pam. First published in January of last year, “Deep Creek” is now out in paperback, so feel free to fold over corners on pages you want to revisit. I found a lot of them. In learning how to care for this land, she recalls how the people in the small town of Creede helped make it happen, how the seasons dictate the ranch chores that need to be done and when, and how she figured out that she could be her own cowboy. Out on the land, walking with her now-signature Irish wolfhounds, taking in the Milky Way in a sky so clear that it’s obvious how it got its name, Houston collects glimmers — bits and pieces of story fragments and observations — that she is able to coalesce first into meditative patterns and then into stories. Thankfully, Pam Houston is here to remind us there is still beauty in the world.
 

8 Memoirs of Nature and the Environment 
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
The Home Place, J. Drew Lanham
Late Migrations, Margaret Renkl
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams
Horizon, Barry Lopez
H Is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
On Trails, Robert Moor