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An elegant shorebird with a rounded body and an improbably elongated bill, the long-billed curlew is a highly intelligent bird that mates for life. There aren't many curlews left, but those that remain undertake stunning migrations from summer grasslands to coastal and wetland wintering grounds, returning to find one another again. With their diverse habitat needs, these singular birds highlight the importance of critical but increasingly endangered grassland ecosystems and have become an emblem of the formidable challenges that all birds face today.

So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her place in the landscape-and in the cosmos—by way of watching birds.

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit—especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree—and the seeds of an odyssey were planted.