These exquisite essays centered on the author and her husband’s ranch in the Rocky Mountain foothills illuminate a rural American place, its river and cottonwoods, its elk and cougar, its heavy snows and morning light. The lives of the people, too—their work of feeding and fencing, their love of an old horse, their faithful dogs, a mother’s death—are told with grace and insight. The quiet attention brought to this place and these lives make Apertures a deeply satisfying read.