More than most of us, farmers are acutely aware of water as a source of life. In his latest book, the Badger State’s most recognized contemporary essayist on the outdoors, Jerry Apps, recounts his boyhood on a central Wisconsin farm where water was never in dependable supply. He worries that one day the whole world will become the uncertain central Wisconsin of his youth. Sources of safe water are being drained for irrigation or polluted by agricultural industry run-off and the harmful effects of chemicals. Apps sets words into sentences as if they were jewels; he’s a beautiful writer whose warm reflections are shadowed with anxiety for the future.
