Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Short extract, work in progress


I have been busy with non-work related stuff lately, including a very pleasant interlude manning an art gallery in Goarec last week for a friend's exhibition. Now we have a heatwave and I struggle as ever to achieve much in such atmosphere, but I'm determined to finish with the landscape book in the next few months and move on to completely different writing projects. So, getting back into the mood...

 The landscape is a sponge for emotions, the great soakaway of human experience. We bring our woes and stresses to nature and lay them down at the feet of the sea or on a lonely mountain top or beside a quiet forest pool. Often we seek nature’s company simply because it demands and expects nothing from us, giving temporary release from inner burdens or the opportunity to ponder issues in the comfortable airy freedom of the outdoors. The search for peace and quiet is a strong factor in our need for landscape, balm for the human individual who is so rarely physically alone and in silence in modern life. We also respond deeply to the expansion of our vitality into open space and the basic practice of walking, man’s most natural pace, which puts us back into a lost rhythmic relationship with the detail of landscape.