Amy M. Hale is writing love letters again. As she did in her previous award-winning books, she is writing to the universe, to individuals, to the land, to change, to work, and even, at times, to who she is becoming as she writes, rides, and hikes over the land.

Washed up on the shores of this strange, wonderful, horrible time, this time of examination and caution and shifting sands, Hale's ride-along writing brings the reader to her unusual home and her out-of-time work as one of the few working cowboys of this age.

Drinking Wild Water is Hale's invitation to a land-given perspective that allows readers to reexamine contemporary life from a vantage point available to vanishingly few. She believes in the power of story to unify and heal, and these essays highlight that we are more alike than we are different, that we have similar wounds that need healing, similar joys and griefs, similar dreams even as our modes of locomotion through life and daily scenery differ.