Field Notes on Avoidance
At a glance
Poetry & fine art photography · Nathan Larson
📓 Field Notes
Photographer and writer Nathan Larson has released Field Notes on Avoidance, a limited first‑edition collection bringing together more than 60 original poems and 50 fine art photographs made as he traveled full time in his Storyteller Overland van, affectionately known as Van Halen.
Traveling through landscapes both wild and overlooked—from Arctic shores to desert nights, mountain ridges to the Gulf—the book explores the ways observation, place, and emotion shape inner life. The poems and photographs move in tension with one another, inviting readers to slow down, look closely, and linger.
✨ Endorsements
Bill McKibben (author, Here Comes the Sun)
“These images are of course penetrating and powerful, but I find the poems make them better, slowing down my contemplation, giving me something to rub against. A real feat.”
Art Meripol (photographer)
“Field Notes on Avoidance is beautiful. There’s a quiet depth to it and a lot to love within. To bring such open honesty to both the words and photographs takes a rare kind of talent.”
📣 More praise
“Larson's best work sits in its honesty. Each poem feels found, not forced. He ties observation to emotion in a way that lets a line about pine needles or kitchen vanilla carry an entire life. The mix of poem and photograph puts it somewhere between lyric memoir and field guide, but without the tidy lessons those books usually chase.”
— Sam Wright, editor
“A lifetime work.”
— Art Meripol
From Alaska to the Gulf, desert nights to Arctic shores — Larson’s photographs span the breadth of North America. Alaskan brown bears on Cook Inlet, high desert light in New Mexico, cloudscapes over the Great Plains, the edge of the Arctic Ocean. The poems don’t explain the images; they press against them, creating the tension that is the book’s signature.
“Each poem feels found, not forced. He ties observation to emotion in a way that lets a line about pine needles or kitchen vanilla carry an entire life.”
— Sam Wright
📦 A physical artifact
Field Notes on Avoidance is conceived as an object of devotion. Printed on Munken paper with Fedrigoni endpapers, the 128‑page volume features a naked spine with exposed cobalt stitching and is available in three distinct cover variants: Flower, Mountain, and Feather. The limited first edition is available exclusively at nathanlarson.com and select booksellers.
🎧 Also available: audiobook edition read by the author, set to field recordings from across North America. Ebook also available.
🧭 Nathan Larson — grew up across the United States, from the Rocky Mountains to the Green Mountains, and studied at the University of Chicago. His path has been anything but straight: roofer, Mexican wolf reintroduction, theatre company founder, outdoor adventure schools (US & Canada). Co‑founded a gastropub in a restored railway station and, with his siblings, a small luxury inn in the former home of Maxwell Perkins (editor of Hemingway & Fitzgerald).
📚 Published two monographs, Avian and Cloud Hunter, plus two books in the Why We Stay series. His photographs are represented by Wild Apple Graphics. He currently travels full‑time in his sprinter van and hosts WonderBuzz, a podcast about curiosity, adventure, and the stories that unfold when you chase the horizon.
📢 Nathan Larson is available for poetry readings, podcasts, artist talks, gallery‑style print displays, book signings, and other event formats for bookstores, galleries, and literary venues. Review copies available upon request.
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