Brief and beautifully intense personal essays explore hope, pleasure, and creativity --offering a crucial balance to David Oates' dramatically personal account of what it has been like to be a "citizen of the regime" during eight years of unprecedented propaganda, torture, waste, and war. What is the right response, when the government that belongs to us goes seriously off course? How does a person's private and creative life relate to the life we share in common?

This book is about keeping faith and experiencing darkness. The author finds wildness and grace breaking out in unexpected places - from city streets to mountain peaks, from ecstatic pleasures to unanswerable questions. Readable, memorable, smart but straight from the heart - these essays give voice to our shared experience of a dark and frustrating time in the nation's life. They should find a wide audience.

Author David Oates: My work as a writer and teacher explores how our human world connects with the larger world of natural wildness. I write essays and nonfiction books plus always working on poetry. I live in Portland, Oregon with my longtime partner, the artist Horatio Law.

We need to reconsider how we live on this planet. The next generations will face climate change, disruption, and almost unimaginable losses. But I believe that the natural world is full of renewal. Our best hope is to consciously align ourselves with this amazing, sometimes scary force.

How to do it? By engaging the imagination.