Trimble’s collection of nature essays is impressive for the variety of subjects/geographies and approaches/techniques but more noteworthy is his introduction to the anthology and the individual authors. As a matter of fact, Trimble drove around the country one autumn to interview most of his contributors. Hence what emerges from this disparate depictions is an amazing unity of the writers’ preoccupations and concerns. The writers’ observations about their own writing techniques and philosophies and the discussions they have with Trimble about the key elements of nature writing reveal how sensory perceptions and field notes become eloquent, coherent and impassionate essays about the natural world. Secondly, nature doesn’t just become the subject of the essays; it also becomes the context so that the intelligence, the wit and the sensitivity of the writer can be employed for their political programme. However focusing on nature writers as writers rather than naturalists, Trimble shows the creative process behind the genre.

Trimble shows how the nature writers intend to teach themselves "how to see more clearly and feel more truly." As Lopez says, because they are "tutored by the land", they are able to affect a fundamental change in modern culture by persuading people to find "a moral, dignified, decent way of living in the world with regard to other peoples, and with regard to the landscape." Abbey claims that writers "have a moral obligation to the conscience of their society" a belief confirmed by Quammen who considers himself "a moral philosopher." Hay, Finch, Berry and Zwinger share a common theme; the need of people to live-not merely read about-a land ethic. While Ehrlich and Hubbell write as inhabitors of the land McPhee, Dillard and Mathiessen write as travelers through various landscapes. But all make the study of the place-the symbiotic relationship between the land and its organisms and its residents-their vocation, their spiritual calling. The resulting words exhort the author to experience landscapes in a similarly intimate way.