Karen Babine
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Water and What We Know:
Following the Roots of a Northern Life

​(University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

What is the effect of place on character? Of our birth landscape on how we see the world? This wonderful, meditative book asks all the right questions. --Will Weaver 
How does land determine what kind of people grow in that soil? In essays that travel from the wildness of Lake Superior to the order of an apple orchard, Karen Babine searches out the stories that water has written on human consciousness and traces an ethic of place, a way to understand the essence of inhabiting a place deeply rooted in personal stories. ​
Winner, 2016 Minnesota Book Award; Finalist, 2016 Midwest Book Award; Finalist, 2016 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award
Praise for Water and What We Know

“What is the effect of place on character? Of our birth landscape on how we see the world? This wonderful, meditative book asks all the right questions.”―Will Weaver

"Writing with the eloquence of [Barry] Lopez and the compassion of Terry Tempest Williams, Babine is also reaching toward a new generation, ensuring the continuity and the legacy of what she has learned.”―Los Angeles Review of Books

“Babine’s focus is on the call of the west and the mountain and rivers that carved its shape. Eloquently, passionately, she strips back the mythology of this land, seeks out the truth lying beneath our American stories, and embraces the complications we must all accept in calling anyplace home.”―Booklist

“The value of essays in this tradition of Thoreau and Olson is to share the insights of others, to measure by our own sentiments and ultimately to examine better how we meet and see the world.”―Lake Superior Magazine

“Whether you’re a kindred spirit to the north woods or the most confirmed city dweller, Babine reminds us that the only way we can be grounded in this world is to know our place in it.”―Split Rock Review

“The stories in Water and What We Know bleed together the places of Babine’s childhood―lake, forest, and sky―until, as in the Minnesota she so loves, land and water become one.”―Mid-American Review

Goodreads reviews for Water and What We Know

Reviews from Goodreads.com
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  • Home
  • Writing
    • All the Wild Hungers
    • Water and What We Know
    • Acadie: A Family Ecology
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Ecology of the Workshop
    • Contributions to Diversity
    • Augsburg College Low-Residency MFA
  • Assay
  • Bio
  • Events
  • Contact