Justin Hocking

A Field Guide to the Subterranean

Reclaiming the Deep Earth and our Deepest Selves

A radically inventive excavation of one man’s life by the critically acclaimed author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld

Justin Hocking grew up in a part of Colorado where so many things happened beneath the surface—mining exploits, underground nuclear testing just thirty miles from his family’s home, and geothermal activity that heats one of the world’s largest hot springs pools. His homelife, too, was plagued by an underground pattern of abuse and virulent masculinity. A Field Guide to the Subterranean charts the author’s lifelong process of unearthing the past and reclaiming his own identity and connection to the natural world.

How might we transform our traumas into deeper care for each other and the landscapes that sustain us? How do we transcend the mythos of the rugged American male so rooted in extraction and exploitation? And how far can we move beyond the self in a memoir? Hocking explores these and other vital questions by combining personal narrative with expansions into geology, ecology, gender theory, mining history, labor rights, and even skateboarding.

Abundant with historical research and teeming with birdlife—and ranging in location from remote caves and mountains to secluded surf breaks in Costa Rica—A Field Guide to the Subterranean heralds a boldly original and kaleidoscopic approach to the genre of nature writing.