A Sense of the Morning: Field Notes of a Born Observer (The World As Home) [Paperback]

David Brendan Hopes (Author)

Book Description

Series: The World As Home | Publication Date: November 15, 1999

In this book, David Brendan Hopes fuses the spiritual and the mystical with the natural, invoking the possibility of grace. Writing about hiking, camping, and particularly about birds, he invites readers to mark the moment when flower, bird, and mountain announce themselves to the soul, bristling and wondrous.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Brendan Hopes, a literary scholar and painter based in North Carolina, does not value the natural world for its beauty, beautiful though it surely is. He prizes it instead, he writes in this engaging book of essays, "because it bears witness," because understanding its operating principles affords us humans something approaching wisdom.

Hopes writes of having learned a few hard lessons on his travels into the wild. One alternately humorous and sobering essay, for instance, describes his encounter on a mountain trail with a grumpy mother bear, who left him with an eight-inch-long laceration as a souvenir. ("She had meant nothing by it," Hopes writes, forgivingly. "She used my leg to steady herself as she would have the limb of a tree, and with the same consequence.") He also ponders the play of improbability and self-discovery that nature seems to delight in, writing of an encounter along the Gulf of Mexico with the exceedingly rare, possibly extinct Eskimo curlew, a bird that wasn't supposed to be there at that time of year. His sighting may have been mistaken, Hopes suggests. But, he writes, he may also have seen a ghost, a creature that had "pulled a vanishing act so complete and so subtle we cannot yet process the reality of it."

Quiet and humane, Hopes's essays speak to the pleasures and occasional pains of a life spent in nature, bearing witness along with the world. --Gregory McNamee

Product Details

• Paperback: 226 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions (November 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571312331
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312334
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,595,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking., September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sense of the Morning: Inspiring Reflections on Nature and Discovery (Paperback)

There are no words to express the magnificence of Mr. Hopes' prose. I came upon a copy accidently and have read and enjoyed it more than any other book in my vast library. This is a book that truly should be re-issued. David Brendan Hopes is a literary gift to be treasured.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly beautiful, December 9, 2000

By 

Patricia Fargnoli, NH Poet Laureate 12/2006-3... (NH, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sense of the Morning: Field Notes of a Born Observer (The World As Home) (Paperback)

David Hopes, in this sensitive and breathtaking book, reaches the highest goal of any good writing--to touch the spirit and raise it up. These essays are about nature, yes, and about its beauty--but more than that: they are about the interfaces between the human world and the natural world. Or, more even than that, they are about how the human and natural world are one, fabric of the same universe. The nature that is our nature. And, it is this knowledge that has the power to save us. I urge you to read this book and treasure it-- for its beauty and its spiritual searching and its wisdom.