Thomas Doty – Storyteller

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Telling Stories, Writing Poems

On a spring morning in 1689, the poet Bashō started a nine month walk through the backcountry of his native Japan. Sometime in Mythtime, Bear and his wife Antelope and an assortment of other animal people journeyed through the Klamath River country, telling stories of the sun that "shone over the world." Bashō wrote poems "in the utter darkness of a moonless night."

These days -- sometimes on foot, sometimes in my Japanese Jeep that the new Bashō, Nanano Sakaki, calls "the most famous Samurai stinkbug" -- I travel the trails and back roads of the West. I tell stories. I write poems. Sometimes I do both. Sometimes the sun and moon travel together.

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