Over Prairie Trails: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Over Prairie Trails, credited to Frederick Philip Grove, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove. Read in English by Bruce Pirie When Frederick Philip Grove settled in a remote area of Manitoba in the early years of the 20th century, he found work teaching in a school over 30 miles from his home. He commuted by horse-and-wagon or horse-and-sleigh each weekend, and seven of those long and challenging journeys are recorded in “Over Prairie Trails,” published in 1922. Grove has a sharp eye for details of nature that were of life-and-death importance to the lone prairie traveller — the shifting aspects of skies, wind, fog, and snow. On one level, the book is a treasury of documentary observation and nature writing. However, while Grove claims to offer a naturalist’s “plain truth,” we come to realize that he is creating a “tale” as much as a nature diary. He selects and arranges his material. Sometimes this means transforming his accounts into archetypal heroic journeys, casting himself as the Odyssean adventurer who battles his way through seas of snow and fog to return to his wife and child. At other times, his reports launch meditations on the nature of observation, consciousness, and the construction of meaning. “Over Prairie Trails” is a landmark in Canadian writing, influencing the way nature — especially the Canadian winter— would be written about for decades to come. (Summary by Bruce Pirie)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Over Prairie Trails
• Author credits: Frederick Philip Grove
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 9
• Listed recording duration: 5:52:09

Catalogue topics

• prairie
• Canada
• snow
• winter
• manitoba
• fog
• nature writing
• memoirs

Track guide

1. 01 - Introductory — 4:27
2. 02 - Farms and Roads — 44:25
3. 03 - Fog — 59:36
4. 04 - Dawn and Diamonds — 38:29
5. 05 - Snow (Part 1) — 35:45
6. 06 - Snow (Part 2) — 42:03
7. 07 - Wind and Waves — 55:58
8. 08 - A Call for Speed — 29:35
9. 09 - Skies and Scares — 41:51

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.