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Travelers in an Antique Land

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Becoming Travelers in an Antique Land

Open Travelers in an Antique Land and become part of the American High Mountain Desert. William Studebaker, poet, and Russell Hepworth, photographer, present audiences the spirit of the High Mountain Deserts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. From each place portrayed, as in "The Space Closest to Our Bodies," We learn to hear a voice

with no sound, with no tongue

with no mouth, as if the air

itself was a way of speaking.

The union of the poet and the photographer with the the High Desert is gentle and mystical. Words and pictures ease readers into their own relationship with the land and its dimensions beyond the common stereotypically flat images of the High Desert while zipping along I-84. The phototgraphs and poems do not deal with people, only what they left while passing through the High Desert such as plows, jet planes, and religion, or how humans indifferently poisoned the land with abandoned cars, asphalt, and nuclear waste. Now matter how humans treated the High Desert, however, its spirit is not destroyed as seen in "Another Time" where

The fence posts were

as deranged as lunatics

loose at noon

..................

But beyond

the distant horizon,

the one the near-sighted

have never seen,

the sky stretched overhead

and the center held

another time.

And so, the High Desert center holds by preserving such wonders as Hell's Canyon, camas bulbs, ritual mating of upland birds, and the patterns and reach of rock formations--the DNA of the High Mountain Desert--the spirit that is, was, and will be.

Each page of Studebaker's poetry faces one of Hepworth's crisp black-and-white photographs. The work stems from the artists' emotional responses to the the desert land that transcend politics or economics or ethnicity. Each of Hepworth's photos visually clarifies the corresponding poem. Studebaker gently draws readers into and through his verse with vivid images, wry humor, and concern for his subjects arising from personal experiances.

Travelers in An Antique Land is for those who wish to hold the High Mountain Desert in their hands and minds, to become part of the place, and to gain a deeper view of themselves.