Flying fish spun away from the bow of the boat, skimming the water on translucent, wing-like fins. They glittered beneath a pouring sun, each one gliding over the glossy waves for up to fifty metres at a time, the kind of fantastical creature you’d long to invent if it didn’t already exist. White water suddenly … Continue reading Crossing Paths
To be spared by the thing that would devour you: that’s all I could think of when Karak explained the small island of trees marooned in the black sweep of stone. Stone that had once flowed, flared and burned. Stone that had been the colour of hot coals, all boiling and blistering in the dark … Continue reading In the Shadow of the Volcano
All journeys ask of us some substantial shift in perspective. To travel with any degree of interest in the unfamiliar means necessarily attuning yourself to such a variety of people, wildlife, landscapes, environments, languages and customs that the world feels irreversibly larger than any single measure of it could ever possibly contain. You learn a … Continue reading Learning a New Light
From the first time I journeyed to the Hoo Peninsula in 2013, spending the day in a swirl of spring snow and stinging winds with local residents campaigning to save the peninsula from becoming the site of Europe’s largest airport, I’ve been trying to unravel the allure of its expansive and enthralling landscape, that absorbing … Continue reading The Hoo Peninsula: The Shapes and Stories of Place
Without divination of their unveiling or any sense of a near and impending trajectory, the unexpected crossing of paths with a wild animal can arise as a profound surprise, a sudden braiding of ways both beautiful and bewildering, as though a brief dazzle of magic had detonated across the surface of the ordinary world. These … Continue reading Coyote Road
Julian Hoffman 