In Canada, wilderness is usually north of the towns and cities clustered in the south. McKay hikes and canoes in this wilderness whenever he can. But wilderness also travels. It often reaches McKay on the wing. He is fascinated by birds, those hollow-boned, flighted creatures dense with otherness – not like the conventional birder, the identifier and collector of species, but as a poet for whom birdwatching 'involves a mental set nearly identical to writing: a kind of suspended expectancy, tools at the ready, full awareness that the creatures cannot be compelled to appear' ('Some Remarks,' 207). His desire is to place himself, in language, where language has no purchase, where the only writing is the writing of the glaciers on the rocks the only thinking is the river slowly knowing its valley (Lependu 47) - Stan Dragland ( University of Toronto Quarterly- Vol 70 No. 4, Fall 2001)