For centuries men cloistered here, monastic, remote, alone. Men who’d shed some of the world as a way of contemplating its essence, stricter in their spiritual devotion to it. At the edge of this high mountain lake, they lived lives pared down to clear symmetry, in the way a piece of bone is carved slowly … Continue reading The Stone Coast
For an audio version of 'In the Eyes of a Bear' please press the play button: As the sun rose over the mountains, I walked a treeless ridge that buckled into the hazy distance. A vast summer sky cradled a few threads of cloud and a warm breeze rolled over my shoulders. Skylark song sparkled … Continue reading In the Eyes of a Bear
The two Prespa Lakes are split by a flat isthmus, a spur of sand which pelicans glide across in summer as they swap one body of water for the other. Those two lakes, though, were once one, a single blue bowl encircled by steep slopes. Over thousands of years, silt and sediment from the mountains … Continue reading Sand, Starlings and Other Small Things
“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.” ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861 “Large terminals, operational buildings, offices, roads and car parks will interrupt the broad open scale of the marsh landscape… The network of ditches and creeks running through the marshes will … Continue reading The Marsh Country
With the end of summer, migrating birds make landfall along the shore of the lake. The dense thickets of alders and willows that have sprouted within reach of the water teem with tiny, flitting forms. Whinchats, warblers and flycatchers rustle through the silvered leaves or snare insects on the wing, taking enough from summer's rich … Continue reading The Small Heart of Things Book Trailer
Julian Hoffman 