The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska's Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid--stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled--in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway under heavy guard in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and cranes, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purp≤ the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a café in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things that catch Merrill Gilfillan's eye and ear in this radiant collection of essays.   Written with a poetic economy that often attains grandeur, Magpie Rising is an exhilarating tour of the Great Plains--its geography, wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time. This is nature writing at its most evocative and insightful.