Orient: Two Walks at the Edge of the Human

Join renowned author David Hinton on two walks into the wild beauty and archaeological ruins of the desert Southwest, where he maps the edges of consciousness and our place in the Cosmos.

Walks in the desert and journeys through Ch’an (Zen) enlightenment. Meditations on the nature of perception and on the nature of ruins. Topographies of mind and of space-time. Poetry and prose. This talismanic book is all of these and more.

In this poetic odyssey of nature writing that blurs the line between observer and landscape, Hinton’s project is nothing less than to map our place in the cosmos and awaken to our interconnectedness with the wild spontaneity of the natural world. It is the culmination of Hinton’s philosophical adventure, deeply informed by his nearly forty years of translating and contemplating China’s ancient poets, Taoist sages, and Ch’an masters. Like Henry David Thoreau and other great literary walkers, Hinton joins philosophical meditations with a keen eye for the slightest of nature’s details. In following these walks, we journey into wondrous and even ecstatic clarities about the nature of mind and existence itself.

DAVID HINTON has published numerous books of poetry and
essays and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy—all informed by an abiding interest in deep ecological thinking. This widely acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from NEA and NEH, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award (Academy of American Poets) and the PEN American Translation Award. Most recently, Hinton received a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.