Award-winning naturalist, poet, and painter Kaufmann (The California Field Atlas, 2017, etc.) invites readers to redefine stewardship of the earth, by uniting “ecological science, ethical responsibility, and the needs of the human community” with the needs and intelligences of the non-human community. Ethical responsibility is central to an “ecological philosophy” that may lead to “people taking care of the land and the land taking care of the people.” He finds that philosophy in Indigenous stories and traditional practices (such as seasonal planned fire burns) born of a deep experiential heritage rather than “ravenous” capitalism. California, “a place of starkly disparate ecological plurality,” serves as an example, but the web of connections among human and non-human life applies to any natural habitat. Thinking, Kaufmann argues, transcends the human mind: All ecological systems “mediate something like thoughts through matter, energy, and chemical feedback.” It is possible, then, to think “like a watershed,” and he praises legal decisions that give rivers rights: “When legislation defines water as a commodity—when it does not acknowledge water as an expression of watershed-scale intelligence—the protections it offers fail.” When watersheds are conceived as “thinking systems,” then environmental law shifts from emphasizing control toward envisioning “participation and reciprocation.” All life, he asserts, “exists as one continuum of consciousness”: Vast networks, for instance, comprise “the mind of the forest.” Drawing on a wide range of thinkers, including Roger Penrose, Wendell Berry, Robert Macfarlane, and Gary Snyder, Kaufmann makes a compelling argument for a decisive new perspective: What, he asks, “would the California economy look like if its laws were oriented to resiliency and adaptation, rather than to extraction and waste?” His delicate watercolor drawings and paintings enhance his text.