While the wind howls, the sea roars, and snow flurries spin in the air outside, I have traveled to 19th century Alaska and South America with R. E. Sahlberg, a Finnish explorer. And I am warmed by my toasty slippers and my cup of green tea.
(Helsinki, Finland; January 2015)
On this gray winter’s day: hot Cretan linden tea and a story about a time long gone, when botanists were explorers.
(Helsinki, Finland; November 2014)
Two weeks of ashtanga yoga bliss on Crete was the perfect way to touch base. Now enjoying one more day of stillness, with Cretan mountain herbal tea and Gerald Durrell’s memories of summer days exploring nature on Corfu. This battered, faded, and apparently much-loved copy followed me home from the marine research base in Kenya last September (replaced with a book of my own). I had no idea then that I would be going to Greece in a year. This year a book on Istanbul followed me home from Greece so who knows what 2015 will bring.
But never-mind the present and future – I so wish I had been with Durrell and his eccentric family on sun-drenched Corfu in the 1930s.
“Each day had a tranquility a timelessness about it so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of the night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us glossy and colorful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.”
(Gerald Durrell)
This story of a Westerner in tumultuous, dirty, enchanting Mumbai may be true, or it may be the invention of a grand ego. Regardless, the display of colors that are the good, the bad, and the ugly of humandkind is not far from the truth. And in Roberts’s own words, the truth is a bully we all pretend to like.
(Helsinki, Finland; May 2014)
“There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne — bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive”
(Karen Blixen)
Today: taking a breather at home, reading about an extraordinary venture 200 years ago when there were vast continents to discover.
There is something magical about the stones of Callanish, facing weather and time out on the Isle of Lewis, at the edge of the world. As if the wind has eroded the monoliths so that only the cores are left, the strongest still standing. Sometimes I think this applies to all of us left standing in this windy world.
I read William Horwood’s book “Callanish” when I was about 10 years old. It describes these stones as a center of power, both for eagles and humans; and the long journey of an eagle, captured at London Zoo, back home to the outer Hebrides and to freedom. I still need to rediscover my own source of power but moments of headspace on our beautiful blue marble help with the recharge.
(Callanish standing stones, Isle of Lewis, outer Hebrides; July 2011)
This blue marble 