Kirjahaku

2017 Great Northwest Book Festival in the Nature Writing Category 2017 WWA Spur Awards, Finalist in Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction Over the past four decades, Bruce L. Smith has worked with most big-game species in some of the American West’s most breathtaking and challenging landscapes. In Stories from Afield, readers join Smith on his adventures as a naturalist, sportsman, and wildlife biologist, as he pulls us into the field of learning and discovery across wilderness areas of western Montana, the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a South African temperate forest. Ranging from humorous to harrowing, Smith’s essays recount capturing newborn elk calves, stalking mountain goats on icy cliffs, being stranded on a mountain after riding out a helicopter crash, confrontations with bears during his research, plus quirky and edifying hunting tales. Throughout his adventures, the magnetism and danger of wild nature are ever present, reminding us that our fascination with wildness often stems from its unpredictability.

In the heart of Wyoming sprawls the ancient homeland of the Eastern Shoshone Indians, who were forced by the U.S. government to share a reservation in the Wind River basin and flanking mountain ranges with their historical enemy, the Northern Arapahos. Both tribes lost their sovereign, wide-ranging ways of life and economic dependence on decimated buffalo. Tribal members subsisted on increasingly depleted numbers of other big gamedeer, elk, moose, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep. In 1978, the tribal councils petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help them recover their wildlife heritage. Bruce Smith became the first wildlife biologist to work on the reservation. Wildlife on the Wind recounts how he helped Native Americans change the course of conservation for some of America's most charismatic wildlife.

The American mountain goat is one of the most elusive and least familiar species of hoofed mammals in North America. Confined to the remote and rugged mountains of the western United States and Canada, these extraordinary mountaineers are seldom seen or encountered, even by those who patiently study them. Life on the Rocks offers an intimate portrayal of this remarkable animal through the eyes and lens of field biologist and photographer Bruce L. Smith. More than 100 color photographs and accounts of Smith’s personal experiences living in Montana’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area accompany descriptions of the American mountain goat’s natural history. Smith explores their treacherous habitat, which spans the perilous cliffs and crags of the Rocky, Cascade, and Coast mountain ranges. The physical and behavioral adaptations of these alpine athletes enable them to survive a host of dangers, including six-month-ling winters, scarce food sources, thunderous avalanches, social strife, and predators like wolves, bears, lions, wolverines, and eagles. Smith also details the challenges these animals face as their territory is threatened by expanding motorized access, industrial activities, and a warming climate. Life on the Rocks showcases the elegance and charm of this little-known creature, thriving in some of North America’s harshest wilderness.

On her way home to Hot Springs, Arkansas, an exhausted young college student falls asleep behind the wheel and veers off the road. Crashing into a tree, her car bursts into flames. When emergency response crews arrive in response to an anonymous 911 call, she's safely lying in the grass-the evidence suggests someone cut her loose from her seatbelt. Who the unknown hero or heroes might be is a mystery. Driving home from a hunting trip, Bruce Smith and his buddy David see a black Suburban with a strange license plate-no numbers, just an image of Old Glory. Bruce and David are intrigued but figure it must be some kind of government vehicle. As Christmas nears, Bruce realizes something special is occurring. A ghostly encounter with a librarian leaves him in possession of The Medal of Honor, a book describing the sacrifices and heroism of those who received the military's most prestigious award. He hears tell of a foiled gas station robbery, where five unknown men immobilize armed crooks with military precision. Something remarkable is happening in Hot Springs, Arkansas-a Christmas mystery Bruce will never completely understand. But maybe it's not necessary to understand miracles.