Windswept: A Passionate View of the Prairie Grassland

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

Wayne Lynch is the author of more than two dozen highly acclaimed
natural history books. He is widely known in North America as a leading
wildlife photographer. After first experiencing the prairies in May
1977, he was smitten. In 1984, he published Married to the Wind: A Study
of Prairie Grasslands. Twenty years later, he has published Windswept,
which covers the northern prairie regions of the United States as well
as the Canadian prairies.

“To understand the grasslands,” Lynch argues, “is to know their
worth.” His book makes clear the importance of these regions: “In
the grasslands, and elsewhere, plant and animal distribution is not
random. Plants and animals inhabit a particular ecosystem, whether it is
grasslands or tundra, desert or forests, because they have certain
characteristics or adaptations.” One of Lynch’s aspirations is to
transmit a concern for one of the integral components of our continent.
To allow the grasslands to disappear, he argues convincingly, would be
to sacrifice a landscape that raises the quality of human life above
mere survival.

The book consists of a preface, an introduction, and six chapters:
“The Land, Its Face and Its Temperament,” “The Level Plains—Flat
All Year Round,” “Sand Hills—Prairie Windscapes,”
“Coulees—Valley of Discovery,” “Sloughs—Water and Wings,”
“Badlands—Layers of Time.”

Each chapter offers fascinating geographical descriptions in an
accessible, articulate style. The photographs are superb. Windswept
provides the reader an educated and fascinating account of one of the
most beautiful—and threatened—of ecosystems.