NOTES FROM THE WEST POLE is the spiritual manifesto of a worldly man who loves this life and its vigorous challenges. You won’t find here the pronouncements of a barefoot yogi advising you to go sit on a mountaintop or retire to a cave with a begging bowl; rather, you will witness the intimate progress of a seeker who knows material success but who looks beyond all of that for the key to partaking of the world’s pleasures while rejecting the age-old, obsolete warrior models of antagonism and aggression. With a full spectrum of expression, ranging from the whimsical to the empirical, Peter Wells offers us the narrative of his odyssey of discovery. Poetry and song, personal anecdotes, graceful line drawings and lush photos of Mendocino and environs are juxtaposed with short, efficient disquisitions on history, government and religion that provide his quest with a solid underpinning of reality and hard truths.

And he knows whereof he speaks. As a boy in London during the Blitz, Wells experienced, at the height of his formative years, the first-hand trauma of war–bombs screaming down from the night sky, bodies in the rubble, family members perishing on foreign shores. An encounter with a German POW is the beginning of a transformation in thinking and seeing for the very young Wells, the first step in a lifelong pursuit of answers to big questions: What lies beyond nationhood and the rules of identity that accompany it? How do we access the pure, universal guiding intelligence inside each and every one of us that leads to full, peaceful awareness behind thought and action? How do we create a harmonious life in an adversarial culture? How can we be useful law-abiding citizens without being slaves or tools? How do we shuck off the bad habits of centuries? Along the way of the author’s journey, inspiration comes from the likes of such divergent personalities as Muhammad Ali and the great Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti, with whom Wells had a fortuitous and completely human encounter. You can open this book anywhere, dip in, and find solace, entertainment or food for deep thought.