We all know travel can expand our horizons, but retaining that sense of wonder after the inevitable return to the daily grind is a struggle.
Author David Oates explores how we can allow it to permanently transform us. When David began mountaineering abroad, he was fleeing from the crushing dullness of routine, and the pain of rejection after coming out. But what started as a necessary escape became a path to lasting transformation, and he reveals how to capture that sense of transcendence (even without a passport) in his beautifully-written new book The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Rewrote My Life (OSU Press, October 2019).
In an interview, David will discuss:
- how nature helped him find his place when he came out as queer
- how awe and wonder can change one's life
- the transformative effects of travel on the human spirit
ABOUT THE BOOK
Coming Soon from Oregon State University Press
Living in Paris for a winter and a spring and waking each morning to a
view of Notre Dame, David Oates is led to revise his life story from one
of trudging and occasional woe into one punctuated by nourishing and
sometimes unsettling brilliance. He asks: What is the meaning of this
tremendousness?
“I love this book. It’s beautifully written, with lushness and yet craft. Oates can really
write. He’s a poet. His style is mature and quite, quite fine. When Oates promotes the
idea that we should ‘be present to mystery,’ we should ‘allow it,’ I say yes.”
—Chris Anderson, author of Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything and The Next Thing Always Belongs
“Clearly and beautifully written, lyrical, poetic, and imaginative in style . . . I was drawn into how intensely particular and honest
Oates was about his spiritual journey growing up and into adulthood. His range of knowledge about the natural world, art, music,
literature, political history, philosophy, and religion makes the book unique in its reach.” —Gretel Van Wieren, author of Listening
at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice
DAVID OATES is the author of two books of poetry and four works of nonfiction,
including Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature and City Limits: Walking Portland’s
Boundary. His award-winning essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Orion. He was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and is founder and general editor of Kelson Books in Portland, Oregon.
About the author
- how nature helped him find his place when he came out as queer
- how awe and wonder can change one's life
- the transformative effects of travel on the human spirit
ABOUT THE BOOK
Coming Soon from Oregon State University Press
Living in Paris for a winter and a spring and waking each morning to a
view of Notre Dame, David Oates is led to revise his life story from one
of trudging and occasional woe into one punctuated by nourishing and
sometimes unsettling brilliance. He asks: What is the meaning of this
tremendousness?
In long years of mountaineering Oates fought the self-loathing that had
infused him as the gay kid in the Baptist pew. And in The Mountains of
Paris, he ascends to a place of wonder. In luminous prose, Oates invites
readers to share a sense of awe—whether awakened by a Vermeer painting
or a wilderness sojourn, by the night sky, a loved one, or echoing strains of
music—lifting the curtain on a cosmos filled with a terrifying yet beautiful
rightness.
infused him as the gay kid in the Baptist pew. And in The Mountains of
Paris, he ascends to a place of wonder. In luminous prose, Oates invites
readers to share a sense of awe—whether awakened by a Vermeer painting
or a wilderness sojourn, by the night sky, a loved one, or echoing strains of
music—lifting the curtain on a cosmos filled with a terrifying yet beautiful
rightness.
“I love this book. It’s beautifully written, with lushness and yet craft. Oates can really
write. He’s a poet. His style is mature and quite, quite fine. When Oates promotes the
idea that we should ‘be present to mystery,’ we should ‘allow it,’ I say yes.”
—Chris Anderson, author of Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything and The Next Thing Always Belongs
“Clearly and beautifully written, lyrical, poetic, and imaginative in style . . . I was drawn into how intensely particular and honest
Oates was about his spiritual journey growing up and into adulthood. His range of knowledge about the natural world, art, music,
literature, political history, philosophy, and religion makes the book unique in its reach.” —Gretel Van Wieren, author of Listening
at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice
DAVID OATES is the author of two books of poetry and four works of nonfiction,
including Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature and City Limits: Walking Portland’s
Boundary. His award-winning essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Orion. He was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and is founder and general editor of Kelson Books in Portland, Oregon.
About the author
DAVID OATES is the author of two books of poetry and four works of nonfiction, including Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature and City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary. His award-winning essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Orion. He was Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and is founder and general editor of Kelson Books in Portland, Oregon.
