Coyote Soul, Raven Heart

Coyote Soul, Raven Heart, Reg Darling's recently reworked collection of short prose pieces, defies ready classification. Yes, it includes a lot of hunting stories, but they are about hunting in the same way that Turgenev's Hunting Sketches are about hunting-concise glimpses into the people and places that matter to the author. Darling's smooth prose should be of interest to anyone who appreciates the complexity of nature and struggles to define our own place within it. E. Donnall Thomas Jr, co-editor, Traditional Bowhunter Magazine, author of Language of Wings and Have Bow Will TravelAs a new hunter and as a writer now learning to write about hunting, I dove into hunting books trying to learn everything I could about this new pursuit and this new writing genre. In the last few years, I've read a stack of hunting books, and one book, this very book in your hands, transcended all the others. In my humble opinion, this is the best hunting book I've read, bar none. What makes Coyote Soul, Raven Heart so stunning? Some of it is Darling's powerful use of chronology as we move fluidly around time and place. Some of it is Darling's crisp prose. Some of it is Darling's philosophical wondering on his life in bowhunting. Some of it is his ethics in this blood activity. When you put all of these together, Coyote Soul, Raven Heart rises off the page and takes you into Darling's corner of the world, Allegheny National Forest, into Darling's mind, into your own heart. Darling says that a deer kill is a gift from the land. This book, too, is a gift from the land, from the deer, from the forest, from Darling. Sean Prentiss, author of Finding Abbey and CrosscutNever, since the Civil War has America been this divided. A certain faction embraces "the American Way" as if it is set in stone, unalterable, regardless of how destructive it is now seen to be. For others like Reg Darling, "contemporary life has the look and feel of a clearcut". The difference, I believe, is the "long hours in the woods" Reg has spent hunting and wandering. There he's developed the "knee-jerk courtesy" and an understanding for "the subtle deep pleasure of good work", so missing from our current collective reality. Coyote Soul, Raven Heart is Reg's story: the long-ago and recent past, the present, all applying to a possible future in which all life can thrive. Brooke Williams, author of Open Midnight and Halflives: Reconciling Work and WildnessA profoundly inspiring work, Coyote Soul, Raven Heart engages us in an examination and celebration of the hunt, its essential role in sustaining our physical and spiritual well-being, and summons deep reflection into our relationship with Earth and the wildness in our souls. Barry Cahoon, a bowhunter rooted deeply into the Northeast Kingdom of VermontOn its surface, Reg Darling's Coyote Soul, Raven Heart: Meditations of a Hunter-Wanderer is a book about hunting; and if hunting is a reader's primary interest, there is plenty here to keep one turning the pages. On a far deeper level, however, this expanded second edition of Coyote Soul, Raven Heart is a book about reconnecting with the sacredness of the wild - be it wild places, wild animals, or the wild recesses of one's own heart. While there are many ways to journey to that end, Darling's chosen method of traditional archery lends dramatic impact and a sharpened sense of poignancy to his personal pilgrimage into the primordial mists of hunting's origins and his own searching spirit. That journey will appeal to any reader who has ever stopped to contemplate nature's mysteries and humanity's place in that enduring puzzle. Jude Dippold, author of Crossings