Examinations of the expansive, dynamic landscape of Denali National Park, Alaska, and a community shaped by the seasonal fluctuations of a tourism economy and subarctic latitude lie at the heart of Ghosts of Distant Trees. Through narrative and lyric essays, Watson explores the ties between the personal and political, considering actions ranging from road construction to planting a vegetable garden, and asks what it might be like “to get to know a place without immediately thinking of what threatens it.” Haunted by burning forests and melting permafrost, these questions and findings arrive at a place of uneasy recognition of the realities of a warming world.