Review by legsbian - The Best American Essays 2001

Overall, I don't think I share the same taste in essays as Kathleen Norris. Despite this, there were a few from this curated selection that I liked:

The Bone Garden of Desire by Charles Bowden, about being alive and eating things.
Vin Laforge by Jeffrey Heiman, about — you guessed it — Vin Laforge, the man who ran a town dump in the Berkshires.
Refugium by Barbara Hurd, about the human need for (occasional) isolation, protection, and swamps.
Facing the Village by Lenore Look, about seeing her father return to his childhood home for the first time.
Cut Time by Carlos Rotella, about the emotional entrails of being a good fighter.
The Last Word by Earl Shorris, about losing languages and therefore 'dictionaries of reality' — ways of understanding and describing consciousness.