Voices of Coyote Springs Farm

Voices of Coyote Springs Farm is a book of 30 poems written at Coyote Springs Farm with sketches from the poet and dedicated to: those who speak for clouds, creeks, canyons, critters, trees, old buildings, and all those people who passed this way before whose souls are listening still. Author's Preface: I live with my wife, Chong, on a farm nestled in the canyon mouth of a long string of foothills which crowd the eastern side of the narrow valley floor of the North Central tributary of the Columbia River called the Okanogan, which in the Interior Salish languages means, "meeting place." Here people of over a dozen of the original tribes still provide leadership to the rest of us who make up this diverse community of Okanogan Country. The foothills where I write form the leading edge of the metamorphosed granitic Okanogan Highlands, a skyward savanna which is the southern finger of the Monashee Range of the Columbia Mountains of British Columbia. A mile to the west across our narrow valley, the limestone faces of the North Cascade Mountains advance inevitably toward us. Like all living things, this landscape has always needed partners, needed caretakers, stewards. It welcomed us when we came over from the San Juan Islands during the summer of 2006 and it sized us up right away. And it continues to give us advice now. In fact over the last twelve years it has quieted us and kept us in one piece. Grant Jones