Winner of the 2008 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, Kurt Caswell’s An Inside Passage chronicles his travels in the rugged mountain forests of Japan’s Shiretoko National Park, on a vision quest in Death Valley, and to the sacred waters of the Ganges River. Whether contemplating a great blue heron as it rests riverside at the onset of a storm, reflecting on a beloved student’s untimely death, walking through the Navajo reservation, or receiving the blessing of a Hindu priest, Caswell unerringly finds the moment of truth. His journey also takes us across the landscape of his marriage, both its initial sweetness and its eventual failure. Praise for An Inside Passage.
|
In the year he spent teaching at Borrego Pass, a remote Navajo community in northwest New Mexico, Kurt Caswell found himself shunned as persona non grata. His cultural missteps, status as an interloper, and white skin earned him no respect in the classroom or the community—those on the reservation assumed he would come and go like so many teachers had before. But as Caswell attempts to bridge the gap between himself and those who surround him, he finds his calling as a teacher and develops a love for the rich landscape of New Mexico, and manages a hard-won truce between his failings and successes.
|
|
