If there has been one theme in Nancy W. Brown's life, it is enjoying where her outdoor adventures have carried her over the years. In this memoir, she celebrates her lifelong love of nature, beginning with her upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1940s and 1950s. As a girl, she was introduced to the natural world. Her grandfather was a respected science teacher and photographer in Southern California, and he passed his talents down. Much of her time was spent outdoors with other children, including watching a neighbor chop chickens' heads off on a chopping block and skin rabbits. She came to see this as normal (although scary, at first). With her parents, she spent vacations camping and exploring the Western states and seashores. As an adult, she gravitated to beautiful places-living and hiking in national parks, canoeing down rivers, and riding horses and mules in the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada and Arizona. Climb mountains, cross passes, and discover the great outdoors with recollections that soothe the soul in Married a Hiker, Got a Cowboy.