This is the recording of a live event at The Foster Museum from September 2022. Authors of ‘The Paradise Notebooks’, Richard Nevle and Steven Nightingale, shared readings and stories of their experiences in the Sierra Nevada in conversation with John Muir Laws. There was a special accompaniment by singer-songwriter Deborah Levoy who translated some of the authors’ poems into songs.
About ‘The Paradise Notebooks’: In ‘The Paradise Notebooks’, Richard J. Nevle and Steven Nightingale take us across the spectacular Sierra Nevada mountain range on a journey illuminated by incandescent poetry and fascinating fact. Over the course of twenty-one pairs of short essays, Nevle and Nightingale contemplate the natural phenomena found in the Sierra Nevada. From granite to aspen, to fire, to a rare, endemic species of butterfly, these essay pairs explore the natural history and mystical wonder of each element with a balanced and captivating touch. As they weave in vignettes from their ninety-mile backpacking trip across the range, Nevle and Nightingale powerfully reconceive the Sierra Nevada as both earthly matter and transcendental offering, letting us into a reality in which nature holds just as much spiritual importance as it does physical. In a time of rapid environmental degradation,
The Paradise Notebooks offers a way forward―a whole-minded, learned, loving attention to place that rekindles our joyful relationship with the living world.