Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape [Paperback]

Come along with David Hinton on a series of walks through the wild beauty of Hunger Mountain, near his home in Vermont—excursions informed by the worldview he’s imbibed from his many years translating the classics of Chinese poetry and philosophy. His broad-ranging discussion offers insight on everything from the mountain landscape to the origins of consciousness and the Cosmos, from geology to Chinese landscape painting, from parenting to pictographic oracle-bone script, to a family chutney recipe. It’s a spiritual ecology that is profoundly ancient and at the same time resoundingly contemporary. Your view of the landscape—and of your place in it—may never be the same. A gorgeous book, a book of power, the very opposite of mystical. If you have a special mountain in your life, you'll read it with understanding; if you don't, it will make you want to get one! —Bill McKibben, author ofThe End of NatureandEaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

A beautiful and compelling meditation on consciousness and the cosmos through a series of peregrinations around and beyond the intricacies of Chinese philosophy. The erudition is staggering, the spiritual aspiration profoundly moving. I couldn’t put this guidebook down, into the night, a diamond moon over my shoulder, and suddenly it was radiant dawn. A unique and dazzling achievement. —Anne Waldman, author ofThe Iovis TrilogyDavid Hinton’s many translations of classical Chinese poetry have earned wide acclaim for creating compelling contemporary poems that convey the texture and density of the originals. He is also the first translator in over a century to translate the five seminal masterworks of Chinese philosophy:I Ching,Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, and Mencius. Hinton has received many national awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, both major awards for poetry translatilS.