The Four-Cornered Falcon: Essays on the Interior West and the Natural Scene

by Reg Saner

The western United States is a region of open space which has profoundly shaped the American character. In "The Four-Cornered Falcon", Reg Saner explores places that can still transform the human spirit with almost sacred power - from a high country forest to the cliffs of southern Utah, from a ridgetop in the Rockies to trails deep within the Grand Canyon. Saner's essays describe journeys - both physical and spiritual - to areas of the interior West that are as remote as they are beautiful. He explores northern New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau, home to the ancient Anasazi culture and the weapons laboratories of Los Alamos. He recalls a long night spent in Chaco canyon, alone and frightened after sustaining a serious rock climbing injury. He tells of encounters with coyotes and magpies, botanists - and wildlife officials. And he looks down on the multiplying lights of Boulder and realizes that the West he has long known cannot escape being loved to death. Saner draws on a lifetime of hiking, climbing, and skiing in the backcountry of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona - but the themes and experiences he explores are the opposite of regional. Like the falcons of the title essay - like humans themselves - Saner's essays are "four-cornered", not simply for their connection to those famous intersecting borders but because they range so widely over space and time. Saner's concern is with "being there", and his witnessing is always more existential than local. Reg Saner, poet and essayist, is the author of "Climbing into the Roots", "Essays on Air", "Red Letters", and "So This is the Map", the last selected by Derek Walcott for publication in the National Poetry Series. His many awards include the first Whitman Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reg Saner is perhaps best known as a Colorado poet, but his lyrical sensibilities carry over to this collection of 12 essays about the natural world, almost all of which are focused on the mountainous western United States. In addition to the essays themselves, the book begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue. For the most part, these essays are dense and very "tightly" written, so don't expect a breezy read. But readers will be rewarded with crystalline prose so carefully crafted that certain passages are likely to amaze. One description of a (non-life-threatening) avalanche that overwhelmed the author while skiing in Rocky Mountain National Park is particularly brilliant and spellbinding. The eponymous essay, which immediately precedes the epilogue, is the least satisfying of the collection. Readers interested in the Rocky Mountain West and natural history in general ought to appreciate this book by a superb prose stylist.

[Matt Nunez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saner writes with passion and purpose, and quite elegantly at that, but ultimately it’s a difficult read without much in the way of narrative through line.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good western writer

[Dark-Draco · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is normally the sort of book I love - essays written about nature and a different way of life, written by a poet with a sense of prose. The recommendation on the back by one of my favourite authors (Le Guin), also was a factor in making me pick it up. But, I have to say, that I didn't really get very far into the book, maybe the first two or three essays. I found them a bit ponderous and too self-indulgent, nothing to keep me interested. I had to force myself to go onward and one of my resolutions is to stop reading if I find myself doing this, as life is too short and there are far too many good books out there worthy of my time.