Without a doubt, Threepenny. Not because they're especially interested in the mountains or the environment (they're not). Because the richness and spontaneity of the writing flows well out of doors, and because the physical form they have chosen — thick paper, broad sheets, light weight — packs well, and works well as tinder, or even insulation in a pinch.
And because they write so memorably. My favorite piece as of late is about Van Gogh's great painting Shoes, which blends art and love and a faith in basic humanity, the earthy reality of our lives.
And because they welcome new writers, such as Tim Carr, who says of this painting:
What did this man—who worked as a bookstore clerk, an art dealer, a
teacher, who felt his destiny was to be a clergyman like his father,
before finding his mission in painting —want to teach us by digging into
the working life? When I look at Shoes it resonates through my
body as if I’m stomping a shovel into a buried rock. And when I look I
feel, feel that I’m not looking at it right, not looking at it fully. A
writer I like very much writes that van Gogh painted “analogous to the
activity,” that the act of making, the production of reality, is
captured in each of van Gogh’s strokes. I see this but cannot grasp it
before it falls away. And I go after it again.
And speaking of the backcountry…off into the local mtns. See you Sunday.
Kit Stolz 