In Irish Celtic lore, “thin places” are those locales where the veil between this world and the otherworld is porous, where there is mystery in the landscape. The earth takes on the hue of the sacred among peoples whose connection to place has remained unbroken through the ages. What happens, then, when a Celtic view of nature is brought home to a North American landscape in which many inhabitants’ ancestral connections to place are surface-thin? In a quest to find a deeper spiritual landscape in his own home, Kevin Koch applies eight principles of a Celtic spiritual view of nature to places in Ireland and to the American Midwest’s rugged Driftless Area, an unglaciated region of river bluffs, rock outcrops, and steeply wooded hills. The Thin Places brings onsite mountaineering guides, spiritual leaders, geologists, and archaeologists alongside scholars in the fields of Celtic studies, religion, and conservation. But the text never strays far from story, from a trek through the Wicklow Mountains and the bogs of Western Ireland or among ancient Native American burial mounds and abandoned nineteenth-century lead mines in the bluffs above the Mississippi River.

The poet concludes the volume with a sobering plea, "The Trees Will Die," to heed the sun's example, to cherish and protect our planet and all its living things.

This book provides scientific evidence to underline the notion that forests offer the most reliable water catchments in the natural environment. The unique Australian ecosystem provides valuable information on the water yields and hydro-ecology of forests. Insights can be transferred to other climate zones and conditions. In this second edition, the author puts a particular focus on the most prominent challenges of our time, in relation to water management. Ground salinity, climate change, and droughts have all been newly added to this updated edition. One of the most important concepts is highlighting the accumulated contribution of smaller catchments and minor streams. Finally, readers will also get information on the economic dimension of water management. With its incisive, disciplined, and quantitative (and occasionally humorous) approach, this book helps scientists, students, and regulators to understand water-driven conflicts and offers guidance on management.

Discover an ancient way of prayer that leads us to new union with God. "Long ago," Calvin Miller writes, "when the Celts built their own rustic kingdom of God in what would later be the British Isles, their fervor in prayer washed their world in a vital revival." In uncertain and dangerous days of high infant-mortality rates, leprosy and plagues, the Celts breathed candid prayers out of the reality of their lives: Desperate prayers for protection. Praise for the God who was king over all creation. Honest prayers of confession. In these pages, Miller introduces us to six types of Celtic prayer that can connect us to God more deeply by helping us pray out of the circumstances and uncertainties of our own life. "This book proposes a kind of prayer that can end our amputated feelings of separateness from God," says Miller. What was true for the Celts is still true for us: "Hunger for Christ keeps us talking to God till our separation is swallowed up in our unending togetherness with him." As rich as the faith they describe, these pages lead us on an ancient path that gives guidance for present and future prayers, until the day the Celts longed for, when all separation is gone and we live forever in the presence of God.