Norman Schaefer has been walking and backpacking the Sierra Nevada for over four decades. He has hiked from Lake Tahoe to Yosemite National Park, the John Muir Trail from Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mt. Whitney, as well as the region north to Sequoia National Park--plus all points between.

Written from 1994-2009, these wry, but wise, poems feel part of an ancient mountaineering tradition that connects wilderness to the landscape of the spirit. Rarely does one encounter poetry which seems so vividly distilled from this practice of wandering and inquiry.


""The poems in The Sunny Top of California are virtually all from the long , high, almost invisible from outside, California Sierra Nevada. Many of them show the influence of classical Chinese poetry and a bit of Han Shan, the 'Cold Mountain' poet. Even so they all have Schaefer's own stamp. They are physical, muscular, gritty, and full of fresh air. I know of nobody else who catches the feel of the high country rocks, trails, and winds, with the immediacy that Norman does. Some are at night, cold, and hungry, but they are always quietly joyful.""--Gary Snyder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 1975