Throughout personal essays spiked with humor and natural science, archaeologist R. E. Burrillo widens his range beyond his popular Behind the Bears Ears. After an upstate New York childhood and a bartending stint in New Orleans’ French Quarter, seasonal resort work led R. E. Burrillo to the desert Southwest, whose redrock landscapes were a source of stability through mental and physical illness. In The Backwoods of Everywhere, archaeologist Burrillo excavates his past, examining Indigenous and tourist cultures, the complexities of American archaeology, and what it means to be a local. From the ancient canal systems of Phoenix, Arizona, to the modern Mayan communities of the Yucatan Peninsula, to the depths of the Grand Canyon, Burrillo brings readers on an entertaining romp chock-full of history, ecology, cultural preservation, and personal stories. In the vein of Bill Bryson, Tim Cahill, and Ellen Meloy, Burrillo's is a fresh voice in humor-spiked nature writing and cultural commentary. Running throughout the wide-ranging topics of The Backwoods of Everywhere are themes of place and locality, and how these vary between cultures and individuals. Marrying the intensely personal with the complex and technical, Burrillo's candid voice brings humor, wonder, irony, and wit to each thought-provoking essay.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Table of Contents: Novels: Adam Bede The Mill on the Floss Silas Marner Romola Felix Holt, the Radical Middlemarch Daniel Deronda Short Stories: Scenes of Clerical Life The Lifted Veil Brother Jacob Poetry: The Spanish Gypsy The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems: The Legend of Jubal Agatha Armgart How Lisa Loved the King A Minor Prophet Brother and Sister Stradivarius A College Breakfast-Party Two Lovers Self and Life Sweet Endings Come and Go, Love The Death of Moses Arion O May I Join the Choir Invisible Other Poems: Count that Day Lost Farewell On Being Called a Saint Sonnet Question and Answer Mid my Gold-Brown Curls Mid the Rich Store As Tu Va la Lune se Lever In A London Drawing Room Arms! To Arms! Ex Oriente Lux In the South Will Ladislaw's Song Erinna I Grant you Ample Leave Mordecai's Hebrew Verses Making Life Worth While Essays: Impressions of Theophrastus Such Three Months in Weimar Carlyle's Life of Sterling Woman in France: Madame de Sablé Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming German Wit: Henry Heine The Natural History of German Life Silly Novels by Lady Novelists Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young The Influence of Rationalism The Grammar of Ornament Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt George Forster Margaret Fuller How to Avoid Disappointment The Wisdom of the Child A Little Fable with a Great Moral Hints on Snubbing From the Note-Book of an Eccentric Leaves from a Note-Book Translations: The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals – Biography