A Fine Kind of Weary: Tales From A Million Different Miles


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$24.95
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Description

Softcover, 214 pages.

This book has occupied my deepest thoughts for the past however many years and has finally seen fit to take flight and seek its own way. Ever since it began seeping into my consciousness it has been a constant and faithful companion as we’ve urged one another to completion—me, always open and eager to receiving and shaping each word and phrase and sentence and paragraph as they’ve presented themselves; the book always there to provide purpose and reassurance and companionship during those mornings and afternoons and hourless nights when sleep would not come, or alone in the midst of some long road trip or interminable flight or unexpected layover in some stark and soulless airport or hotel or tent, or beneath some starry desert sky or on one of those calming midnight treks along the rain- glistened streets or dry desert trails or moonlit ridges and rivers and streams I know and love so well.

It has guided me to places I might otherwise never have dared venture, as well as back to places I already knew and cherished. There was the Great Huron Forest in far northern Michigan and the thick palmetto swamps of Old Florida, the East and West Forks of the Brazos River, Tres Rios and San Huberto in faraway Patagonia, Little Current and Cape Hatteras, and Rio Piedra down in southwestern Georgia where the Atchison family always welcomes my friends and me back to what forever feels like home and where the quail are fast and prolific and fly like rockets.

The memories that reawakened as I worked on the text and photographs in these pages conjured up the latent scent of that big elk herd I stumbled into one cool summer morning while fly fishing the high country of northern New Mexico. Again I felt the reassuring weight of the finely sculpted and time-polished grip of my old recurve bow pressing warmly into my hand as I drew on that monster buck up east of Grayling, and the exquisite sting of the fine, wind-driven sleet that tore into my face during those final few minutes alone on the Rio Malleo as I brought to hand one last trout from Patagonia.

My first encounter with the volcano Lanin is still firmly cached in my memory—as permanently as the photo that mi amigo Robert McClenagan shot of what is surely the most elegant expression of altitude and ice I have ever beheld, valiantly thrusting her cloud-shrouded shoulders and snowy summit 12,293 glorious feet into the blue Argentine sky at my back as I took a quick break from fishing to scrawl a few impromptu impressions into my little pocket journal.

A book should be experienced, not simply read, and I assure you, a great deal of time and effort and diligence has gone into the composition and design of this book and the words and photographs and artwork it holds to try and make it worthy of the attention and thought you might choose to invest exploring its pages.

The stories contained herein weren’t written to be mere chronicles of what actually occurred, nor as simple records of time or place or geography or any particular order of events to be dutifully logged and reported to those who weren’t there to experience them themselves. Rather, they are offered so that you, Dear Reader, might somehow see and hear and smell and taste and, most importantly, share the experiences in real time. Is that not, after all, a writer’s task—to share and re-share life itself in all its gore and splendor?

"Reading a Mike Altizer story is like sitting by an evening campfire in a hunting camp. His gifts are not only those of a fine storyteller, but a conjurer of images, using words like artists' brushes to color the landscapes of his, and our, memories." -Jim Carmichel

"Whether you're into enlightened philosophy, or are a cosmic cynic, or follow Scripture, or simply read chicken bones, you'll be highly intrigued as to how Mike Altizer's mind works." -Skip Knowles

"Mike Altizer's poignant, sensitive style takes you to where he is and to what he's doing, and lets you feel what he feels. Trite as it may sound, it really is like being there yourself. The rise of a trout, the flush of a quail, the laughter of a friend, and the feeling of being at exactly the right place at sundown." -Steve Smith

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