Boulder author Steve Jones Wins “Nebraska as Place” Award

Boulder author Stephen R. Jones has won the 2023 Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction in the “Nebraska as Place” category for Nourishing Waters, Comforting Sky: Thirty-Five Years at a Sandhills Oasis. The award will be presented on October 14 at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where Steve will give a reading from the book.

His many years of observing and photographing the Nebraska Sandhills culminated in this book that interweaves stories of the prairie with stories of indigenous peoples. He presents scientific information poetically in a style reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold.

Reading this love song to the prairie, you can almost hear the snort of a white-tailed deer and the courtship “Hooooouuuuus” of Long-eared Owls. You can almost smell the milkweed flowers and almost taste a stew made from prairie plants. You feel the cold of a January dawn, and you see the beauty of a misty prairie sunrise or a fiery sunset. And you share the heartbreak when prairie potholes are plowed over, when species disappear, and when earth’s natural systems unravel.

Despite the continuing devastation of our planet, Steve is not pessimistic. He revels in the success of breeding Trumpeter Swans and in the miracle of a monarch butterfly perched on his hand. Toward the end of the book, he says of his favorite retreat, “Things have shifted slightly over time, but this seminal place looks and functions much as it did thirty-five years ago. I can only hope it will remain this way.”

Steve, a passionate voice for conservation, is well-known to members of the Boulder County Audubon. He has volunteered with Boulder County Audubon in many capacities, including several terms as president. He has written many natural history books and co-authors the monthly Nature Almanac series.

Because of Steve, many of us have been privileged to experience the sanctuary of the Sandhills—the largest remaining expanse of native prairie in North America and the quietest landscape between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. We understand when he writes, “I hear the curlews wailing in the grassy dunes just beyond the pines and feel a glimmer of hope for our ravaged Earth.”

Steve Jones in his element. Photo courtesy of Ruth Carol Cushman.