Set, like "River of Traps, " on a small farm in a New Mexican mountain valley that the author has tended since 1977, "The Walk" explores the illuminating ways in which personal and natural history interweave in a familiar environment. A kind of love story about a landscape, the book consists of three interrelated essays -- "The Walk, " "Geranium, " and "Paradiso." These pieces move from a period of strife and conflict in the author's life to a place of limbo, to a place of peace -- or, as the author says -- from "inferno to purgatorio, and finally to paradiso." DeBuys takes the same walk each morning, through the woods near his farm, and arrives at a clarity that comes from observing life carefully from the same vantage point for years. DeBuys, one of the country's premier nature writers, is revered for his compassionate, clarifying prose. "The Walk" only reinforces that reputation.