The Far Corner

Book excerpt: John Daniel writes from the ground he walks on and the landscape he inhabits in the northwest corner of America, spinning narratives that seek to discover how he belongs to the land and to the wholeness of life itself. He takes his readers to beaches, old–growth forests, sagebrush steppe–lands, and deep river canyons — wild places, and places scarred by human exploitation — and leads us too through inner terrains where he explores mortality, creativity, and spirituality. Both lyrical and informative, these essays are diverse in focus, various in length, and inventive in form — one is constructed as a journal, two as linear montages. By turns playful, awed, cantankerous, and tender in tone, they deliver themselves in a style of high informality, welcoming readers to join the author as he journeys through some of the puzzlements, sadnesses, and small glories of living. This collection extends John Daniel's earlier work, The Trail Home, in the personal essay form.