A Field Guide to the Subterranean is about the lessons of hard-won renewal and the ad hoc spiritual rigging we sometimes have to create to overcome existential challenges, Hocking uses various modes--personal narrative, natural history, suspenseful narrative nonfiction, geology--to demonstrate the ways in which the environment, not just our polluted natural surroundings but the façade of the rugged American character, thwart authentic self-knowledge and connection to the world. In particular, Hocking reckons with toxic elements found in Gen X skateboarding, the Outward Bound type of miseducation about the environment, and the Men's Movement from Robert Bly machismo to proto Incel/Proud Boy cultures which led him to struggle to accept his own individuality. Living Frost's adage that "the only way out is through," Hocking boldly mines his self, finding footholds in natural wonder, birding, surfing, a generous partner, service, to climb back out and regain his life.