The Four-Cornered Falcon: Essays on the Interior West and the Natural Scene (Creating the North American Landscape)

The western United States is a region of open space which has profoundly shaped the American character. In "The Four-Cornered Falcon", Reg Saner explores places that can still transform the human spirit with almost sacred power - from a high country forest to the cliffs of southern Utah, from a ridgetop in the Rockies to trails deep within the Grand Canyon. Saner's essays describe journeys - both physical and spiritual - to areas of the interior West that are as remote as they are beautiful. He explores northern New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau, home to the ancient Anasazi culture and the weapons laboratories of Los Alamos. He recalls a long night spent in Chaco canyon, alone and frightened after sustaining a serious rock climbing injury. He tells of encounters with coyotes and magpies, botanists - and wildlife officials. And he looks down on the multiplying lights of Boulder and realizes that the West he has long known cannot escape being loved to death. Saner draws on a lifetime of hiking, climbing, and skiing in the backcountry of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona - but the themes and experiences he explores are the opposite of regional. Like the falcons of the title essay - like humans themselves - Saner's essays are "four-cornered", not simply for their connection to those famous intersecting borders but because they range so widely over space and time. Saner's concern is with "being there", and his witnessing is always more existential than local. Reg Saner, poet and essayist, is the author of "Climbing into the Roots", "Essays on Air", "Red Letters", and "So This is the Map", the last selected by Derek Walcott for publication in the National Poetry Series. His many awards include the first Whitman Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.