If that wasn’t clear already, it really hit home when Jon huddled us up in the parking lot and delivered a sedate guide speech. Covering 10.5 miles round trip, and a rise of 1,600 feet, we art boys had our work cut out for us.

Jon had planned the week so that our distances and inclines gradually increased in difficulty in order to condition us for today’s hike to the Grinnell Glacier. Injuries are suffered, but in the end, the men live to tell their tale. In this excerpt from the book, our esteemed author travels to Montana’s Glacier National Park with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and author and fellow adventurer George Saunders. A paean to outdoor experiences, Offerman takes us on “a rousing tour of America’s most beautiful places as well as a mission statement about loving, protecting, and experiencing the outdoors.”

I do hope you will enjoy this ramble through and celebration of the land we all love.In Nick Offerman’s recently released book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, America’s favorite Renaissance man and New York Times bestselling author puts down his cellphone and explores the natural beauty of America’s great outdoors. These three quests inspired some “deep-ish” thinking about the history and philosophy of our relationship with nature in our national parks, in our farming, and in our backyards what we mean when we talk about conservation and the importance of outdoor recreation, all subjects very close to my heart. I followed that up with an excursion that could only have come about in 2020-my wife, Megan Mullally, and I bought an Airstream trailer to drive across (several of) the United States. In 2018, Wendell Berry posed a question to me, a query that planted the seed of this book, sending me on two memorable journeys with pals-a hiking trip to Glacier National Park with my friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, as well as an extended visit to my friend James Rebanks, the author of The Shepherd’ s Life and English Pastoral.

In my new book, I take a humorous, inspiring, and elucidating trip to America’s trails, farms, and frontier to examine the people who inhabit the land, what that has meant to them and us, and to the land itself, both historically and currently. I have always felt a particular affection for the Land of the Free-not just for the people and their purported ideals but to the actual land itself: the bedrock, the topsoil, and everything in between that generates the health of your local watershed.

Nick offerman book where the deer