Customer Reviews

Bright Shoots Of Everlastingness: Essays On Faith And The American Wild

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Equal parts John Muir and John the Baptist, author Paul Willis offers us winsome tales and thought-provoking essays. A former mountain guide, now a professor of English, his life in writing as well as the wild means he's equally at home scaling a peak or evoking a peak experience. This is transparent work, and his willingness to turn on himself--"We're all lost ... but if you happen to get there, that's called leadership"-- compels and disarms.

Once nicknamed Cliff Hanger (thanks to exploits in collegiate elevator shafts and planting certain items atop lofty campus locations), Willis today retains his love of adventure, be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual: These are journeys upward as well as inward. He extends his passions outward, too, addressing wilderness/development controversies. "Sometimes it is the little invasions that break my heart."

By turns funny, then poignant, he vividly depicts nature -- both Mother and human. Of a smug, one-upping fellow hiker, he of the "melon-shaped sweat stains under the arms," Willis writes: "He crooked his pudgy thumbs beneath the straps of his bureau-sized Kelty and made his voice loud ... What he meant to say was, `You are lost, and I am not. Ha, ha, ha.'"

Many of these essays first appeared in prestigious publications, including Best Spiritual Writing, Best Christian Writing, Image, Books & Culture, and others. Now divided into four sections simultaneously geographical and spiritual -- The Shore, The Mountain, The Valley, The Hills -- this collection culminates in the stirring Epilogues. From adolescent courtship rituals to a spoof on inspirational romances, from memoir to close-shaves in high places, Willis always entertains, often inspires.

Picture him summiting, or settling into a wingback chair, where he open(s) a tattered book that was the first book to open [him]." You, too will "read far into the night."

Equal parts John Muir and John the Baptist, author Paul Willis offers us winsome tales and thought-provoking essays. A former mountain guide, now a professor of English, his life in writing as well as the wild means he's equally at home scaling a peak or evoking a peak experience. This is transparent work, and his willingness to turn on himself--"We're all lost ... but if you happen to get there, that's called leadership"--compels and disarms.

Once nicknamed Cliff Hanger (thanks to exploits in collegiate elevator shafts and planting certain items atop lofty campus locations), Willis today retains his love of adventure, be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual: These are journeys upward as well as inward. He extends his passions outward, too, addressing wilderness/development controversies. "Sometimes it is the little invasions that break my heart."

By turns funny, then poignant, he vividly depicts nature--both Mother and human. Of a smug, one-upping fellow hiker, he of the "melon-shaped sweat stains under the arms," Willis writes: "He crooked his pudgy thumbs beneath the straps of his bureau-sized Kelty and made his voice loud ... What he meant to say was, `You are lost, and I am not. Ha, ha, ha.'"

Many of these essays first appeared in prestigious publications, including Best Spiritual Writing, Best Christian Writing, Image, Books & Culture, and others. Now divided into four sections simultaneously geographical and spiritual--The Shore, The Mountain, The Valley, The Hills--this collection culminates in the stirring Epilogues. From adolescent courtship rituals to a spoof on inspirational romances, from memoir to close-shaves in high places, Willis always entertains, often inspires.

Picture him summiting, or settling into a wingback chair, where he open(s) a tattered book that was the first book to open [him]." You, too will "read far into the night."