"The Woods Stretched for Miles" gathers essays about southern landscape and nature from nineteen writers with geographic or ancestral ties to the region. This remarkable group encompasses not only such well-known names as Wendell Berry and Rick Bass but also distinctive new voices, including Christopher Camuto, Susan Cerulean, and Eddy L. Harris.

From the savannas of south Florida through the hardwood uplands of Mississippi to the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the range in geography covered is equally broad. With insight and...