For Nina, whose mountain spirit inspires. It’s rare that I meet people in the mountains. In all that space it’s not often that our slender human paths cross and twine at the exact same time. Instead there are wheeling raptors to fill the expanse, and ground-nesting birds to either side of me. Ravens darken the … Continue reading Shared in the Sunlight
Category: Prespa
First Things
To listen to an audio version of 'First Things' click the play button You hear the long, quavering call of a blackbird and open the window, stiff after the swelling snow. The song slips inside, spins and swirls for a few moments, and then steals you from the room. Standing outside, warmth lilts about your fingers … Continue reading First Things
Water Music
The earth has its voices and songs. It has its own languages crafted over millennia through slow and patient processes, its dialects peculiar to geological regions or areas of weather, to places of particular precipitation. The earth has its voices and songs just as we have our own, a music born of place, notes threaded together by winds … Continue reading Water Music
A Winter World
To one who lives in the snow and watches it day by day, it is a book to be read. The pages turn as the wind blows; the characters shift and the images formed by their combinations change in meaning…It is a shadow language, spoken by things that have gone and will come again. ~ … Continue reading A Winter World
Crossing Paths
Certain exquisite experiences in the natural world arise because of the precise alignment of unpredictable paths. We can never know exactly where and when they’ll occur, if at all, and that, perhaps, is the very essence of their charm. Other than being out on the land as often as possible, I know of no way to … Continue reading Crossing Paths
Julian Hoffman 