Once again, the author uses his strong observations of nature to reflect on the links human beings have to the land. In traveling through the American Southwest and Alaska, Lopez finds new, once hidden, meanings in natural phenomenon—flocks of geese and Arctic fox tracks—and remnants of lost human cultures. The land and humans, he concludes, share a strong spiritual bond that echoes and impacts the universe's great rhyme of life.

Elegantly told against a haunting and beautiful melodic backdrop, Crossing Open Ground propels us into a new posture—indeed a whole new relationship—with the world around us.