An engrossing memoir and eloquent portrait of place, The Thunder Tree shows how powerful the relationship between people and the natural world can be.

“When people connect with nature, it happens somewhere,” Pyle writes. “My own point of intimate contact with the land was a ditch… Without a doubt, most of the elements of my life flowed from that canal.” The High Line Canal, originally built outside of Denver, Colorado, as part of a plan to move river water to the Western plains for irrigation, became the author’s place of sanctuary and play, and his birthplace as a naturalist.

This reprint of the classic book, updated with a new foreword by Richard Louv and a preface to this edition, makes one of Pyle’s important early works once again available. For a new generation of readers, it offers a powerful argument for preserving opportunities for exploring nature.