Hello there. I’m Dave.
Welcome to my little corner of the Internet.
Here is where I share a selection of my poetry.
Physically, I am located in Canada,
in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia,
between the Monashee Mountains to the east and
the Okanagan Highlands to the west,
where I can often be found hiking and exploring
this beautiful and fascinating terrain.
If there is a theme to my poetry, I believe it to be exploration –
introspection and extrospection.
My curiosity leads me down the path to understand myself
and the connections among landscape, environment, and culture.
As a result, you will find poetry here from
my travels across Canada and internationally.
Wherever I travel, wherever I go, I walk.
Walking gets me off the beaten path and
shares a rhythmic cadence to poetry;
indeed, most of my ideas for writing come to me
during the process of walking.
I have hiked many of the longest trails across Canada
and scrambled up a couple hundred mountains,
primarily in the Canadian Rockies.
I even had a chance in 2017 to walk across Canada,
6,100 kilometres between Halifax and Vancouver.
You can find those poems and walking texts here.
Internationally, I admit that I am partial to walking
the Caminos leading to Santiago de Compostela, Spain,
not only for the spiritual benefits, which are many,
but also for the joy of walking with people
from all over the world along a trail scattered
with cafes and pilgrim hostels (albergues) –
such civilized hiking!
Other than walking, one of my small joys is to
sit in a café with a coffee and pastry,
pull out my journal and just write about the experience.
You will find some of these texts in Café Scenes.
If even one poem or travel text here encourages you to be creative
(don’t deny it; you certainly can write a better poem than I),
or to think about something differently,
or to head out on your own walk,
I have met my objective.
If you have thoughts or feedback you’d like to share,
please feel free to post a comment on one of the posts
or contact me at DaveGutscher [at] gmail [dot] com.
Live boldly.
Hope our trails cross one day.
Dave