Wandering Time: Western Notebooks

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past, Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car several years ago and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop, Urrea wandered the West from one year's spring through the next.

Hiking into aspen forests where leaves "shiver and tinkle like bells" and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies, he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of trees—he learned how to live. As nature opened Urrea's eyes, writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery, Urrea ruminates on music, poetry, and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity, he relates tales of marmots, geese, bears, and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air "so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth" and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures, ordinary people, and common creatures.

Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems, novels, and nonfiction, he has explored issues of family, race, language, and poverty with candor, compassion, and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date, a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.

Genres: Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction, Nature, Travel

130 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Luis Alberto Urrea is the award-winning author of 13 books, including The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway and Into the Beautiful North (May 2009). Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Luis has used the theme of borders, immigration and search for love and belonging throughout his work. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 (nonfiction), he's won the Kiriyama Prize (2006), the Lannan Award (2002), an American Book Award (1999) and was named to the Latino Literary Hall of Fame. He is a creative writing professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and lives with his family in the 'burbs (dreaming of returning West soon!).

Reviews

[Cristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Initially, the writing moved delicately... then crude, and then finally settled somewhere in between. We hear the stories like you're having a beer with your pal, sitting on those camp chairs with cup holders, at the golden hour. Except we're tagging along in his Subaru for the year. The author was very insightful about reincarnating as a trout. Choosing to focus on the pivotal moments in your existence - then experiencing the inevitable death - my favorite approach. This is exactly how life should be experienced.

He has strong ties to his Mexican heritage, which I valued. Particularly in the context of family. There's the part where he cheers three cheers for Neruda! (known for his poetry on love), then, the only word in the following paragraph is, "Teresita". He was paying tribute to his aunt, a healer in the 19th century, whose followers proclaimed her the "Saint of Cabora." He used Teresita rather than Teresa. Adding "ita" to the end implies affection. Very sweet of him.

I couldn't help but laugh and smile the entire time. There are boyish tendencies in the author that I believe all men demonstrate throughout their lives. I am referring to ideas that lack any rational foundation. Like finding a bone and pocketing it even if it still has flesh and blood on it, just because it's cool. Yeah, buddy! That is cool! I had a really heart-warming laugh.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like his title, this book wanders. It’s essentially a journal of his travels around the west at a time when his career was still developing, full of little stories, poignant observations, memories and philosophical ponderings. As a fan of Urrea’s work, which includes fiction, nonfiction and poetry, I love it. His ability to observe and make connections amazes me. Others might find the book a little . . . scattered.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetically written travel journal contains many gems of wisdom about writing and writers.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give it 4.75 if possible. I wish my journal read like this. Beautiful sentences I want to tape on my walls to reread, and poignant thoughts. Also silly random moments that I just shrugged off. It was wonderful to read about someone else’s experiences in places I know, on trails I’ve hiked. It made me feel confirmed in my existence. I’m so glad this is the book I start 2022 off with.

[Eredità · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this felt like coming home.

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short lyrical book catches the feel of the Rocky Mountain West I know as well as anything I've ever read. Urrea was born in Tijuana and that's stayed with him but the center of his landscape is Colorado and Arizona with excursions into Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming (which he has some real problems with--amen, hermano). Even at Rock Springs, though, his humanity and openness radiate outward; he even tells himself he probably should have tried talking to the couple with the nazi tattoos. Organized around the cycle of seasons from Spring back to Spring, Wandering Time devotes something like 70% of its energy to the dyad of "walking and words," the centers of Urrea's spiritual universe. The rest brings those into contact with social issues, history and the people--hippies, bikers, immigrants, evangelists--with whom he shares the landscape.

The writing's beautiful.

[amf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wandering tale of a writer who lets the reader tag along while he puts his life back together. This small volume is for folks that enjoy reading other’s thoughts that are sometimes philosophical, but more often, just personal observations that end up addressing a universal human condition. In college, I considered Edward Abbey a radical environmental champion, ergo, it was enjoyable to read Urrea’s sidebar take on Abbey and some of his b.s.. I was amused and enlightened. The book loses steam toward the end… I’d like to think that is because he started to find hit footing again.

[Esjay Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. There are really nice moments where I felt that I was sitting next to the author as he jotted in his journal. The visuals were wonderful. Simple. I probably would have given it five stars had it not been for moments (pages) where he seemed like he was not applying himself. I felt, several times, where the writing seemed forced, or as if he was journaling/writing for the sake of doing it.

[Mike Barnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of good little bits in it, but overall it just felt like a lot of throw-away lines. Like any personal journal, probably a lot more meaningful to the person who wrote it, but not so much to anyone else. Still, I love him as an author (this is already the 3rd or 4th book I've read by him) and I will continue reading everything else he's written!

[Sirius Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not my cup of tea. Some of transcendentalist views mixing with beat writing, wandering around and finding inspiration in nature are major ideas in the book.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 1 out of 5]

no real lyricism, no revelations, plenty of pretentious allusion porn abounds within the pages, just another jest in pretense of talent

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a journal of Urrea’s wandering. Not my favorite but his writing is always lovely.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

You would have to care about the ground. And you would have to care about the words. This is what I'm getting at: mud and verbs. Breathe one into the other and you stumble into a tiny Genesis. It's our little secret. It's a secret worth sharing.

So begins Urrea's slim volume of wandering the trails of the mountainous West, in search of wisdom, solace, and a refill at the writer's wellspring. It's not hard to see why Urrea, a professor of creative writing, would choose this hard-to-find title as his personal favorite, even stacked against his more well-known and scrupulously researched The Hummingbird's Daughter and The Devil's Highway. He has left an eye-opening explanation as to the importance of Wandering Time in his own life here: http://www.luisurrea.com/books/non-fi.... In his painfully honest recap of a dark period of his life, Urrea reveals the depression, failure, and desperation behind the nature-infused inspiration we read in its pages.

Subtitled "Western Notebooks," this walking companion and writer's journal breathes mud and verbs. This is a book to pull down from the shelf in search of guidance and the breath of life. It's a volume made for revisiting passages marked up in penciled scrawl. Too bad I have to return it to the library.

[Jeannette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collections of impressions from a year wandering, mostly in the high country of Colorado, brought me, a fan, to a more intimate feeling for Luis Urrea. Perhaps unfortunately, I read several of his other books first: The Devil's Highway, The Hummingbird's Daughter, Queen of America, Into the Beautiful North. I also listened to him at the Tucson Festival of Books, he is one of those large-in-life figures who dominate a scene. He is friendly, personable, passionate, warm, funny, and best, deep. I have to note that he is also a good writer, even in this slim volume of haphazard recountings of this and that during his year rediscovering himself snoozing in the lap of an aspen grove alongside streams that told him stories.

[Mark Folse · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All the road has been alive with incident and visions." Behind that line is a book that would make Edward Abbey weep and Annie Dillard curse like a drunken sailor not to have authored it, a tour de force avalanche of prose poetry that buries the main road and reveals the mountain, dusted in crystal. Mountain and meadow, forest and desert Urrea paints the west in sunset and moonlight and peoples it with saints and maniacs that would send Kerouac into a benzedrine frenzy of poetry. Whatever you are doing right now if you are not reading this book you are doing it wrong. The title page says first paperback 2015 and his bio says he is writer in residence at U of L Lafayette and if you see me tearing down I-10 intent on an autograph and to shake his hand don't get in the way.

[J.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine addition to the personal essay/nature/on the road in America genre. Urrea is a personable guy who provides plenty of food for thought without being stuck-up or boring. This is a lively, quick and insightful read---and those 3 characteristics in one book are hard to find. Give this one a whirl. You won't regret it!

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful little book. The kind you want to keep close and re-read sentences. Part journal, part musings, part poetry. A very different view of Urrea than his novels and non-fiction. Makes you stop and look around.

[Eric Shaffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is one of my favorite non-fiction books.

[Monita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another lyrical journal that will break your heart and give you hope.

[Lynn Sneyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous writing. Love feeling the West.