Marries Kerstin Mornestam, a naturalized citizen from Sweden with whom he shares strong interests in the arts and nature. His parents give him a copy of This Is the American Earth.

Spends the first of several summers with Kerstin on the northern Oregon coast in a weathered building that had been at various times a gas station, church, and bar; days are spent walking the beach, and evenings reading.

Begins teaching as an assistant professor of English at Colorado College, and finds disturbing the changes in Colorado that have occurred during his time in California. “I came back to Colorado to discover that it had become like California. . . . The places where I had worked, hunted, climbed, and run rivers were all being destroyed, and for me the desperate question was, how do I survive this? Edward Hopper’s paintings had already given me a clue, though I didn’t fully understand it.” —From an interview in Landscape: Theory (New York: Lustrum Press, 1980)