Taking its title from an affecting speech given by renowned author Barry Lopez, Because It Is So Beautiful is a response to desperate questions surrounding the protection and preservation of America's wildlands. Lopez asserted that wilderness activists will never achieve the success they seek until they can testify before legislators that a certain river or mountain must be saved not because of its economic importance or its recreational, historical, or scientific value, but because it is so beautiful. The words resonated with young mountaineer-musician-mathematician Robert Leonard Reid, who was struggling to understand his relationship to the world, to find his vision as a writer. What he learned on that long-ago evening is that to save a wilderness or indeed even to live one's life you must reach deep into your heart and find what is there, then speak it plainly and without shame. This belief is knit throughout the nineteen pieces in the collection, which include essays from Reid's previous books Arctic Circle, Mountains of the Great Blue Dream, and America, New Mexico, three essays that appear here in print for the first time, as well as revised and expanded versions of essays that appeared in Touchstone, The Progressive, and elsewhere.

"June 2017"--Title page verso.

Author's Note -- To live one's life -- West, to the future -- From America, New Mexico : Rebuilding the clouds -- Journeys through space and time -- A shelter in the sky -- The condor's last flight -- Ling-Ling has killed another baby -- A poem, gathering in my mind -- Intruders on a lifeless ridge -- From Arctic Circle (six excerpts) : I. To feel the earth turn -- II. Honeymoon blues -- III. Very close to everywhere -- IV. Travels with Lucky -- V. The porcupine in winter -- VI. A vow fulfilled -- The fire and the rose -- From Mountains of the great blue dream : Decrescendo -- Pilmgrimage to Tsoodzil -- Landscape of the settled heart.