The "Rio Oscuro" begins as snowmelt in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and makes its way through wandering but determined tributaries, watering pueblos, pastures, fields, and orchards in the chain of narrow valleys that lead to the Rio Grande. In Cidermaster of Rio Oscuro, one of these orchards is the setting for fourteen seasons of growth and harvest and for one man's meditations on the natural cycles of life and death. Harvey Frauenglass, the current steward of this orchard, walks us through his days of incessant, humbling work as he prunes the trees and floods the orchards, presses cider, hauls boxes to the farmers' market, tends geese and chickens, and repairs gates and joists. "Almost everything on this farm", he writes, "is susceptible to improvement". But as Frauenglass comes to realize, this shamble of property offers, in reality, a kind of salvation.