April’s What Are You Reading?

We’re just back from seeing the country, and my most recent reading list is heavily non-fiction. 

I’m fascinated by George Bird Grinnell’s life and work. A conservationist and friend of Theodore Roosevelt, GBG deserves a great deal of credit for being one of the most influential people in staving off the extinction of the American Buffalo, also known as Bison.

After graduating from Yale, Grinnell fell in love with what was then considered the American West. At 22, he signed on with a budding professor to go to the Great Plains to dig up dinosaur fossils.

He was a privileged New Yorker whose father was the main investment banker for Vanderbilt. And yet, the son wanted little to do with the family business. He wanted adventure and to become a writer.

Like Samwise, Emily, and me, he never gave up his home on the East Coast, but nearly every year, he traveled West. 

As a writer, he used his words to save birds, Bison, antelope, other endangered beasts, and public lands. You’ll find his name sp…