What is a sacred moment? Is it a big, sudden change in the direction of your life or your physical or mental state? Or is it a moment in which you understood your fears or made a choice to let something go? We may find our lives full of fear, hurt, or pain of loss, and even though these daily experiences have not caused major earthquakes or volcanic eruptions around the world, it is in these moments of our daily lives that we must look for our answers. In Small Steps, Huge Changes: The Extraordinary Moments of an Ordinary Life, writer Phyllis Reed shows us how it is possible to discover healing and joy by choosing to take just one small, courageous step. Through reflections, remembrances, poems, and vignettes, Reed tracks her own small steps through realms as varied as love, parenthood, loneliness, fear, and connecting to places, other people, and holy presence. Each true story, told in Reeds conversational, nurturing tone, is a tribute to those who have found ways to live happily and healthily after great difficultiesto see the extraordinary in their everyday experiences. Taken as a whole, these moments of rising and falling, of joy and defeat, become our sacred lives. Our sacred moments are our greatest gifts, and the choice is ours to step forward and accept and learn from them.

More than a tenth of the land mass of the UK comprises 'urban fringe': the countryside around towns that has been called 'planning's last frontier'. One of the key challenges facing spatial planners is the land-use management of this area, regarded by many as fit only for locating sewage works, essential service functions and other un-neighbourly uses. However, to others it is a dynamic area where a range of urban and rural uses collide. Planning on the Edge fills an important gap in the literature, examining in detail the challenges that planning faces in this no-man’s land. It presents both problems and solutions, and builds a vision for the urban fringe that is concerned with maximising its potential and with bridging the physical and cultural rift between town and country. Its findings are presented in three sections: the urban fringe and the principles underpinning its management sectoral challenges faced at the urban fringe (including commerce, energy, recreation, farming, and housing) managing the urban fringe more effectively in the future. Students, professionals and researchers alike will benefit from the book's structured approach, while the global and transferable nature of the principles and ideas underpinning the study will appeal to an international audience.

Mountain regions encompass nearly 24 percent of the total land surface of the earth and are home to approximately 12 percent of the world's population. Their ecosystems play a critical role in sustaining human life both in the highlands and the lowlands. During recent years, resource use in high mountain areas has changed mainly in response to the