John Muir's childhood immigration to the U.S. and coming of age on his father's Wisconsin farm provide a spare glue for Simpson's investigation of what land means to us now. Drawn by a sense that he is missing a critical link to where he lives, a suburb in Ohio, Simpson (Visions of Paradise: Glimpses of Our Landscape's Legacy) reverses Muir's journey, visiting first the marsh that gave the 19th-century conservationist much of his early pleasure and then Muir's homeland in Scotland. Along the way he visits the people who currently live on the land that was the Muir farm, members of the displaced Ho-Chunk tribe and Scottish tenants and landlords whose lives echo the land use that shaped their culture. In Scotland, Simpson finds his sense of home, an affinity to the land and culture that he soon fears he cannot engender in his own Ohio. Throughout, Muir acts as a touchstone for Simpson, who reflects on trails of Muir's thought from time to time and finds avid lovers of Muir's legacy at each landing. Readers will find more of Simpson here than Muir, and Simpson's narrative is best when he relates history or allows the many intriguing people he interviews to tell their own story. Unfortunately, it all too often suffers when he races along, dispensing with a clear sense of chronology, building small stacks of questions he doesn't really answer and failing to coherently integrate the ideas from interviews with his own stream of thought. All the same, underneath this tangled surface, Simpson does articulate some keen insights into the tenuous ties we have to the places we live and the pleasure of giving in to a sense of belonging. (Sept.)
