Customer Reviews

Mountain Dialogues

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Frank Waters, the essayist as well as the novelist, has a style that many nowadays might consider too elaborate or rhetorical. But it has an elegance, and stems from the era before television, before travelogues when the writer was charged with evoking a portrait of place and its particular atmosphere. Waters connects the mountains behind Taos Pueblo where he lived for some time, with the spirituality or power that certain mountains inherently possess. To appreciate where Waters is coming from in this book, it is helpful to read a text by an individual (the name escapes me) mentioned in this book who wrote concerning experiences encountered in Tibet and on a mountain by the California/Mexico border. Of particular interest to me is an experience Waters had that seems to transcend time. Literally.

This is a great book of essays from the Southwest's Grandfather of Literature.....a writer of both fiction and nonfiction.
Essays titled "The Living Land", "Silence", "The Four Fold Structure of Mind and Matter", and "America, a Footnote", with several others, take the reader through the broad perspectives of Waters.

The land where Frank lived in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico near Taos is the home now of his widow Barbara and the Frank Waters Foundtaion. frankwaters.org

For those that are not familiar with Frank Waters, you are missing an opportunity. This book is a good place to start.