Tales from the Seasons: Aesthetic Adventures, Mystical Experiences and Poetic Epiphanies in Ross County (1988-1998)

Life is an adventure, spiritually understood. In the stories in this book you will follow the adventures of characters living in a fictional world called "Ross County" as they seek out the touchstones of an authentic Life Together in Earth & Spirit.  You will hear an account of their hikes, experiences and epiphanies, as well as listen as they reflect on these 'moments of revelation.' Many of the poems in this book are expressions of vivid and self-transformative experiences; stories told in verse that express something of the wonder each character has for life, focused on an event that drew them a little closer to self-realization and self-fulfillment; these being the goals of an earthen spiritual life.

Thus this book is not a collection of short stories and poetry in a traditional 'modernist sense.  Rather, it is a collection of spiritual vignettes, in verse and prose, intended to inspire the reader to reflect on their own life, in search of clues and keys to ways of living it that would render it more interesting, give it depth and lead on toward wisdom's dolmen. If you have read any of the author's other works, you will recognize many of the characters in these pages.  Favorite characters from the novel Ham-Farir: The Faring of Matthew Thorin Dier (2008; Volumes I, II, and III) you will find depicted here in other life-situations.  Many of the characters quoted in either The Fires of Yule (2001) or WellSprings of the Dier (2002) are given voice here, in either poems or in stories, being shown living out the spiritualities bodied forth in those texts.