In Service of the Wild begins and ends on the author's home ground, thirty-five acres of farmed-out land now planted in Scotch pine monoculture. Mills imagines her northern Michigan landscape from its barren glaciated past to its climax as maplebeech hardwood forest to the ways in which logging, slash fires, and agriculture transformed the Northwoods ecology. With her trademark humor and humility, Mills invites the reader along as she learns to dig up, plant anew, and generally to assist the regenerative processes of time and nature.

Six months after North Korea invaded the south, the United States along with Allies under the United Nations entered what was called a Policing Action. The United States had troops stationed in South Korea and immediately mobilized to combat the illegal invasion. The Conflict would last three years and would end with an Armistice but no surrender by the North. This Armistice is still in effect today. The U.S. lost 33,000 men in that war.