This book is a lyrical testament to a great love affair between the writer and his region. In this book, one of British Columbia's favourite authors writes with passion about his favourite topic -- the geography of British Columbia. Stephen Hume guides readers through the natural world, moving from the thin, cold air of British Columbia's high country to the fecundity and silence of the deep rainforest. He writes of the iridescence of dragonflies dancing out brief lives above summer ponds and the brittle forests of glass sponges growing in the light-less depths of the continental shelf, where they have flourished undisturbed since the Jurassic. Hume contemplates the meaning of rain; the tawny islets in the Salish Sea; what the night sky tells us about our place in time; people who choose to live at the margins and the relentless passage of lives and seasons, loss and renewal.