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  • Zen of the Plains: Experiencing Wild Western Places by Tyra A. Olstad
  • Kathleen Danker
Zen of the Plains: Experiencing Wild Western Places
By Tyra A. Olstad. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2014. ix + 269pp. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 cloth.

In this engaging memoir, Tyra Olstad details her quest to understand a deep attraction [End Page 223] to the open spaces of North America’s western prairies and plains. She first experienced these places in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, on a trip following her graduation from high school in western New York State. In subsequent years, she takes breaks from college to seek out such jobs as intern and then park ranger in the “shortgrass/semidesert shrub-steppe” of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona’s Painted Desert; as a junior-ranger ambassador at Badlands National Park in the mixed-grass plains of western South Dakota; and as a paleontology technician at Fossil Butte National Monument in southwestern Wyoming, again in shortgrass, semidesert terrain.

Many readers will be able to relate to the several attempts it takes Olstad to find the courage to step off a set path into the unmarked wilderness during her first time working at Petrified Forest National Park Nonetheless, she soon turns into a devoted off-trail walker and observer of the rocks, plants, animals, fossils, weather, and seasons of the wild landscapes of the West, which she describes in vivid prose enhanced with photographs and hand-drawn, illustrated maps. Olstad also provides historical and ecological information about the parks where she is employed, and she frequently quotes passages from classic and current nature writers. Readers well versed in this genre may find some of these quotations overly familiar.

On the other hand, Olstad does not overdo the brief quotations from Zen masters that run as a motif throughout the volume. She looks to Zen teachings to guide her when she cannot warm to the highly regulated tallgrass Konza Prairie Reserve outside Manhattan, Kansas—no walking allowed off designated trails—yet unexpectedly enjoys an uncharacteristic stint as a cave guide in damp and chilly Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island in coastal Alaska.

Ultimately, Olstad finds her most Zen-like experience of the western plains in the white, frozen, blank yet beautiful expanses of Fossil Buttes National Monument following the cleansing sweep of winter blizzards.

Kathleen Danker
English Department
South Dakota State University
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