Midwest Bedrock

Kevin Koch is author of Skiing At Midnight: A Nature Journal from Dubuque County, Iowa; The Driftless Land: Spirit of Place in the Upper Mississippi Valley; and The Thin Places: A Celtic Landscape from Ireland to the Driftless. More of his work, including shorter works on outdoor places and photos, can be viewed at https://www.kevinkochdriftlessland.net/. Koch is Professor of English at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa

"Kevin Koch's Midwest Bedrock eloquently redefines and reimagines that fuzzy obscure geographic region that outsiders often describe as drive-through or fly-over country.  "What exactly is the Midwest?" Koch asks in the intro.  The question serves as a kind of reflective trailhead for the book.  His search for the answer is equal parts natural history, memoir, and travelogue, and includes a chapter-long visit to all twelve midwestern states.   From the headwater of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca, to Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail, to to Iowa's Effigy Mounds, to Ohio's Hocking Hills, Koch is an attentive and thoughtful guide, who leads readers to the natural wonders and beauty of America's heartland. Reading the book is a literal re-membering of a region that few have seen or considered with such insight and clarity."—Tom Montgomery Fate is the author of six books of creative nonfiction.  The most recent is The Long Way Home, a collection of travel essays."Kevin Koch knows the landscape of the American Midwest, not as "flyover country," but as root-in country.  In Midwest Bedrock Koch burrows beneath the Midwest's unassuming surfaces, down into its rich layers of natural and cultural history.  He finds there—and shares here—the region's beauty and bounty, its checkered past, and its ever-present promise.  He grounds us in soil and story."—Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold Foundation and Center for Humans and Nature"Kevin Koch is among the most respected literary voices in the Midwest.  In this beautiful new book, he serves as both guide and pilgrim, inviting readers to see anew a region that is often portrayed as flat and unchanging.  Here, instead, is a place of mystery, discovery, and perpetual transformation.  A place where the defining stories are written not by human hands, but by ice, wind, rock, water.  A place of hidden recesses in the earth and in the hearts of those who have loved, defended, and grieved this land across centuries.  As a life-long citizen of the Heartland, I am filled with gratitude for this informative, visionary journey."—John T. Price, author of All is Leaf: Essays and Transformations.

• Introduction: Midwest Bedrock1. Wisconsin: The Ice Age Trail2. Michigan: A Great Lakes Shoreline3. Ohio: The Hocking Hills4. Indiana: Hoosier National Forest5. Kansas: The Flint Hills6. Nebraska: The Niobrara River and Northern Sandhills7. Missouri: The Katy Trail8. Illinois: Cahokia and the Upper Mississippi River Shoreline9. North Dakota: The Rendezvous Region10. South Dakota: Glacial Lakes and the Eastern Corridor11. Minnesota: Lake Itasca, Headwaters of the Mississippi River12. Iowa: Effigy Mounds in the Driftless LandConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex