by Barry Lopez
Following a long stretch of writing essays, I returned to writing short fiction in the early 1990s. In 1993 I chose a few stories from those I’d already completed, wrote several more in a related vein, and arranged them together in a collection of twelve (to match the number I’d established in the other two books), including again, for the third time, a story entitled “Introduction.” In September 1994 Knopf published Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren, what I considered the final volume in the trilogy. The stories in the first two books had been unified by their particular geographical settings; the stories in Field Notes were related, instead, by the numinous nature of the landscapes in which they were set.
As I see it, the same handful of questions I possessed about the meaning of human life when I was a young writer have remained with me. These concerns, about personal identity, for example, or the ethereal dimensions of reality, are now, I hope, simply more nuanced, more informed.
When I write a story, I am not trying to make a point or demonstrate any particular proficiency as a writer. I am trying to make the patterns of American cultural life more apparent, patterns any individual reader might be able to take further, metaphorically, than I am able to, patterns that I hope will serve the reader’s own search for meaning. In the creation of the story, it is the reader’s welfare, not the life of the writer, that is finally central.
Published by Trinity University Press
San Antonio, Texas 78212
Text copyright © 2014 by Barry Holstun Lopez
Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Barry Moser
Introduction copyright © 2014 by James Perrin Warren
These stories originally appeared in Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven, River Notes: The Dance of Herons, and Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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OUTSIDE
was originally published in a limited
edition of fifty copies by David Pascoe at
Nawakum Press in Santa Rosa, California.
The design and engravings are by Barry
Moser. The brush calligraphy is by
Judythe Seick of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The typeface is Nofret, designed by Gudrun
Zapf-von Hesse, released by the H. Berthold
Type Foundry of Berlin, Germany, in 1984.
This trade edition of Outside reproduces
as closely as possible the fine press edition.
The cover design is by Barry Moser. The
book was printed on Finch Vanilla paper
at Maple Press in York, Pennsylvania.
BARRY LOPEZ is the author of Resistance, About This Life, Light Action in the Caribbean, Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award, and nine other works of fiction and nonfiction. He is the coeditor, with Debra Gwartney, of Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape, published by Trinity University Press. He has written for a wide range of magazines, including Harper’s, Granta, the Paris Review, the Georgia Review, National Geographic, and Outside, and he is a recipient of the John Burroughs Medal, the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, Pushcart Prizes in fiction and nonfiction, and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations. For more information, please go to www.barrylopez.com.
BARRY MOSER is the prizewinning illustrator and designer of more than 300 books for children and adults. He has won numerous accolades for his work, including the prestigious National Book Award for Design and Illustration and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. He is widely celebrated for his dramatic wood engravings for the only twentieth-century edition of the entire King James Bible illustrated by a single artist. His work is represented in collections throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Library of Congress. Moser is the Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Art at Smith College and serves as printer to the college. He lives in western Massachusetts.
JAMES PERRIN WARREN is the S. Blount Mason, Jr. Professor of English at Washington and Lee University. His books include John Burroughs and the Place of Nature, Culture of Eloquence: Oratory and Reform in Antebellum America, and Walt Whitman’s Language Experiment.
