In 1969 Gary Snyder returned from a long residence in Japan to a homestead in the Northern Sierra foothills, where he intended to build a house and settle with his wife and young sons. He had just published his first book of essays, Earth House Hold. A few years before, Wendell Berry left New York City to return to homestead near his grandfather's farm in Port Royal, Kentucky, where he built a small studio and lived with his wife. Berry had just published Long-Legged House. These two founding members of the counterculture and of the new environmental movement had yet to meet, but they knew each other's work and soon began a correspondence. Neither man could have imagined the impact their work would have on American political and literary culture, nor theimpact they would have on each other. Religion and spirituality were a natural topic--Snyder had gone to Japan to develop his Zen practice, while Berry had become something of a renegade Christian. From 1973 to 2013 they exchanged more than 240 letters, bringing out the best in each other as they discussed politics and community, art and commerce, and their unfolding lives at the end of the twentieth century. No one can be unaffected by the complexity of their relationship, the subtlety of their arguments, and the grace of their friendship.--From publisher description.
