A lively introduction to the scope and breadth of Waters’s work, Deep Waters touches on the themes of philosophy, pre-Columbiana, Eastern philosophy, Egyptology, American Indians, and a host of other subjects. Kishbaugh and Waters write of the women in their lives, mutual friends, writing and publishing challenges, newly discovered books, Pueblo politics, pets, ailments, and nearly everything under the New Mexico and California sun.

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Deep Waters by Alan Louis Kishbaugh

Preface

By Alan Louis Kishbaugh

It is an arguable assertion that books change lives, but I believe they do. Everything that we experience, reject, or digest has its effect on us, be it seen or unseen.

I have always viewed myself as a product of the land, of the American West where, from earliest memory, I was exploring vacant lots, ravines, foothills, mountain ridges, deserts and, later, jungles and seas. Nature, for me, has been my greatest teacher, my enduring guide, and my constant companion. She is my severest critic and my abiding friend.

The earth is our mother whether we accept it or not. She nurtures us no matter how we repay or disrespect her. The indigenous peoples of the world—our earliest ancestors—have understood this and they, being closest to the earth, have in their cosmologies performed rites and ceremonies to ensure the continuity of all life forms.

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  • "ALAN KISHBAUGH’S DEEP WATERS presents a fascinating and rare friendship between a younger, curious writer and one of the best writers of the Southwest. Their letters—exchanged for nearly three decades and detailing life in Taos and on the pueblo, the struggle to achieve success, the dangers of encroaching ‘progress,’and a deep reverence for the land—offer a luminous portrait of one of America’s most visionary and unsung authors. Deep Waters should give Frank Waters his rightful place among America’s literary visionaries."

    – LYNN CLINE
    Author of Literary Pilgrims:
    The Santa Fe and Taos Writers’ Colonies, 1917-1950