Walking the Flatlands: The Rural Landscape of the Lower Sacramento Valley

The portrait that Mike Madison paints of the lower Sacramento Valley in Walking the Flatlands includes details not only of soil and sky, fish, fowl, and vegetation, but of the region’s human ecology, with particular reference to farming and housing and their interrelationships. This is a thoughtful study of a rural landscape in the tradition of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, based on a lifetime of close observation. Deliberate and well-considered, it is sometimes lyrical as well—a subtle manifesto for a sustainable way of life.