From Peaks to Prairie

Along twenty-nine trails near Yellowstone National Park, Cara Chamberlain leads readers on a journey of perseverance, drawing lessons from human and natural history. She reflects on being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and explores how walking helps manage anxiety, opening rich pathways of perception.

In From Peaks to Prairie, Chamberlain examines her personal life, family history, and struggles as she encounters animals and plants of Montana and Wyoming. Each essay is an episode mingling the past with the present, combining sightings of bears, birds, and wildflowers with memories of her Utah childhood and family. She observes, “I walk. It’s the way I’ve found not to eliminate GAD and OCD, as I used to long to do, but to live with them.” Mountains and prairies offer strength and nurture those who need them. It is on their paths that Chamberlain finds clarity.

Cara Chamberlain is the author of several books of poetry, including the recent chapbook To Gaze Upon Their Loveliness. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including the Boston Review, Great Plains Quarterly, and The Southern Review, among others. She lives and works as a freelance editor in Billings, Montana.