STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

“Thomas Jefferson’s Nature” will be among two book events looking at America’s ranchlands and wilderness offered at The Community Library this week.

• Pam Houston will discuss her collection of essays, “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 12.

  The book describes Houston’s upbringing with Ranch Almanac-type entries that offer delightful appreciations of wolfhounds, lambs, chickens and miniature donkeys and the natural wonders she can see from the ranch, including the Milky Way, according to Publisher’s Weekly.

  Houston’s descriptions of ranch routine, which “heals me with its dailiness, its necessary rituals not one iota different than prayer,” leads her to a graceful unironic approach to nature, the publication adds.

  Copies of her book will be available for purchase, courtesy of Iconoclast Book Store.

• Dr. Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history, Emeritus at the University of Virginia, will discuss “Thomas Jefferson’s Nature,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 14.

Jefferson views of the grander sweep of nature were contradictory. He had a lifelong passion for nature, even as he sought to shape the landscape

Onuf is the author, coauthor and editor of numerous books including the New York Times bestseller “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.” He co-authored that with Annette Gordon-Reed, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Hemingses of Monticello,” which revealed Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings.

Other books of Onuf’s include “Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood” and “The Mind of Thomas Jefferson.”

The presentation is presented in collaboration with Boise State University and The Nature Conservancy.