Dancing on the Stones

Mr. Nichols continues to amaze and delight his readers. As a novelist he lives in an invented world but as an essayast he takes his master's skill at prose and knifes into the butter of living in a world he finds all too real. "Dancing On The Stones" allows the reader to hop safely from the rocks of reality onto the reefs of fantsy. John's reality in Taos becomes the reader's virtual trip to his moral values. The trip is a maze of lofty thoughts bottomed by harsh facts and an unpleasant insistence on making one's living while living with what one makes. If more of us had John Nichols's insight into nature we'd see our world the way he sees his: life exists in spite of nature and life is as fragile as the clouds which enhance and hide it.