The tall pine trees surrounding the grove ripple and whisper; wind flows through their branches, producing arboreal sounds that soothe the listener’s anxieties and worries. Those attending seem lost in time in space. Then the earth sounds diminish slowly, leaving all attending enveloped with a sense of calm and joy.

The Testing Ground: Volume 3 — Grand Celebration is set in a future time after third orb inhabitants have been tested and pardoned from threat of extinction. The Grand Celebration site, located in Bozeman, New Montana, opened to visitors 484 solar years after Offworlders settled in the Big Hole Valley, Old Montana.

Following the saga that began with The Testing Ground — The Cave and continued with The Testing Ground — The Journey, this concluding volume of the Testing Ground trilogy is a visitor’s guide to the celebration displays and activities. Visitors are presented with historical documentation explaining how bipeds from two different worlds initially confronted, then respected, each other and worked together to repel foreign invaders to preserve their communities and freedom.

The celebration guide describes the structures and contents of three extraordinary pavilions: History, Unity, and Travel. Each pavilion contains displays of thousands of historic relics and touch-screen information modules documenting how bipeds from two different cosmic orbs worked together for mutual survival on the Testing Ground. The guide also provides side-trip itineraries to visit local, regional, and international events, as well as opportunities to join exploration teams for unique educational visits to far-off regions of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Visitors learn how previous third orb religious and political confrontations threatened survival and altered the physical geography and landscape features in contested war zones, including the Middle East and Korean Peninsula. Documentation reveals how atomic explosions along previously undetected fault lines dramatically changed the structure of the Mediterranean region and disrupted river flow into the once Middle Sea, leaving a barren, dry basin.

The Grand Celebration guide also reveals how individual, family, and community decisions, coupled with hard work, cooperation, and trust, produced lasting peace and reconciliation, as Testing Ground inhabitants prevailed and averted potential annihilation.

Louis Evan Grivetti is a professor emeritus in the Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis (UC Davis). He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in paleontology at UC Berkeley (thesis: “Intertidal Foraminifera of the Farallon Islands”), and his Ph.D. in geography at UC Davis (dissertation: “Dietary Resources and Social Aspects of Food Use in a Tswana Tribe”). His academic research specializations have included cultural and historical geography, domestication of plants and animals; food history; and wild plant use during drought and civil unrest/war – with implications for health and nutritional status.

Sargent Thurber Reynolds was a retired technician for Valley Toxicology, and exploration geologist and consultant with Reynolds, Bain and Reynolds, and Tri-Valley Oil & Gas Co. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geology at UC Berkeley (thesis: “Geology of the North Half Bannack Quadrangle, Beaverhead County, Montana”), with a secondary credential at National University. He was an ardent angler, past president of the Fly Fishers of Davis, Calif., and past president of the Northern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers.

Both authors have lived and worked extensively within the western, central, eastern, and southern regions of North America, and have lived, traveled, or worked in the Middle East. The photo shows Sargent Thurber Reynolds (L) and Louis Evan Grivetti celebrating publication of their trilogy.