W. D. Wetherell's Yellowstone Autumn: A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land is a finely crafted, deeply introspective work, at once both a memoir of a wry and insightful writer who chooses to spend his fifty-fifth birthday alone at Yellowstone National Park, and an ode to this most awe-inspiring and majestic part of the American landscape.

His introspection starts immediately, with the first words: "What kind of man wants to be alone on his birthday?" And his long, hard mid-life look in the mirror (quite literally at one point) weaves in and out of the narrative along with some interesting nuggets of Yellowstone's history, observations of the park's natural wonders, and his considerable time spent fishing its many rivers and streams. At one point he imagines himself as one of the early party of men who first encountered Yellowstone, and he provides a series of inspired mock-journal entries that show how he would have recorded such sublime adventures.

Along the way, Wetherell takes stock of his conflicting emotions at this milestone age, his marriage, and offers a truly riveting account of how it feels to be part of the "sandwich generation," simultaneously responsible for his teenage children and his aging father, and the conflicts that inevitably result. ( )