As the title suggests, the central subject of this collection of essays is the landscape where Ehrlich lives. Wyoming is a state that is famously associated with images of vast, mountainous landscapes and with the mythos of the American frontier. In fact, it is commonly referred to as “Big Wyoming” and is nicknamed “the Cowboy State.” It is not hyperbole to say that Wyoming is made up almost entirely of open spaces, as it has the smallest population of any state and has remained, on the whole, relatively unchanged since the period of Western expansion in terms of urbanization. However, the “open spaces” that Ehrlich evokes in her essays can also be understood as a metaphor for the landscape of one’s mind or soul. Thus Ehrlich draws the connection between the spaces of her natural surroundings with the landscape of her inner world and contemplates their codependent relationships.

In the essays, Ehrlich discusses the devastating loss of her partner, with whom she had been for many years. Thus, the sublime natural “open spaces” of Wyoming create a parallel with the landscape of the human soul after the death of a loved one—at once brutal and hauntingly beautiful. Moreover, Ehrlich contemplates how the rugged ecology of her life in Wyoming and the prominent visibility of the cycles of the natural world helped her to reconcile herself to the death of her loved one. Just as the soil can be barren and lifeless one season and fertile and prosperous the next, so, too, do the lives of people flux between times of emptiness and fulfillment.

Ehrlich muses on how, in our daily lives, we become blind to the life that surrounds us—she states that the open spaces of Wyoming are often misunderstood as lifeless. However, upon closer examination, they reveal themselves to be bursting with vibrancy and teeming with living things. She encourages the exploration of these spaces, especially in how this could help us better understand the “open spaces” within ourselves that we perceive as empty and to understand alternative ways of seeing and being.

Central to Ehrlich’s contemplation of the spaces of Wyoming is the author’s examination of the wildlife that inhabits these places and the codependent ecology that characterizes them. By closely examining these relationships in the natural world after the death of her partner, she found a way to reconcile herself to the death that is necessitated by all life and grew to love the cycles of life that she observed. By studying the ecology of the natural world that surrounded her, she gained perspective by accepting the fact that the processes of life are not limited to human affairs, which led her to evaluate her feelings about her own loss. Therefore, although the essays are not explicitly centered on environmental activism, they do advocate for the preservation of the United States’ natural heritage as something that is not only essential but beautiful and enlightening.