In this episode of A Writer’s World, Nevada Poet Laureate Shaun Griffin reflects on The Paradise Notebooks by Richard Nibel and Stephen Nightingale, a luminous record of a thirteen-day trek across the High Sierra shaped by equal parts natural history and spiritual attention. Moving through essays on birds, stones, trees, and water, Shaun explores the book’s rare balance of science and lyric wonder, and the call it makes to look closely at what remains, especially in an age that trains us to look away.
At the heart of the episode is a line Shaun carries like a compass: “If we must walk holding grief in one hand, then let us walk holding hope in the other.” The Sierra becomes more than a backdrop here. It becomes a teacher, a witness, and a reminder that the “news of the natural world” still offers meaning, humility, and a way back to ourselves.
A Writer’s World airs on the first and third Sundays at 5:00pm on KWNK 97.7FM, or anytime at kwnkradio.org. Please support your local independent bookstore: in Reno, The Radical Cat; in Las Vegas, The Writer’s Block.
