In the Footsteps of Wisconsin’s Great Naturalists

Discover the Wisconsin places that first inspired some of America’s greatest nature lovers – Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Increase Lapham, August Derleth, and more – by traveling their trails with sense-of-place explorer Robert Root in his new Wisconsin Historical Society Press book Walking Home Ground: In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth.

As a transplant to Wisconsin, Root follows the notes and trails left behind by Wisconsin’s early nature explorers to uncover the natural treasures in his new home ground. Along the way, he investigates the changes to the landscape over nearly two centuries and chronicles his own transition from newcomer to a journeyman.

Root walks with Muir at John Muir State Natural Area, with Leopold at the Shack, and with Derleth in Sac Prairie. Closer to home near Waukesha, Wis., he traverses the Ice Age Trail guided by such figures as pioneering scientist Increase Lapham.

In prose that is at turns introspective and haunting, Walking Home Ground inspires us to see history’s echo all around us: the parking lot that once was forest; the city that once was glacier. “Perhaps this book is an invitation to walk home ground,” Root writes. “Perhaps, too, it’s a time capsule, a message in a bottle from someone given to looking over his shoulder even as he tries to examine the ground beneath his feet.”

Root has long been immersed in the nonfiction of place. He is the editor of Landscapes with Figures: The Nonfiction of Place and the author of 20 books. Root teaches nonfiction in Ashland University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and for the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. For more information or to buy the book, visit wisconsinhistory.org.