This Particular Place is a collection of eight small books of essays written over a period of a decade. Each book contains stories and musings gleaned from decades of living on a farm. These essays were originally published in The View From Here, a newspaper column in The West County and Shelburne Falls Independent.
"In a sense, each was written as a love letter to a way of life, and to this particular piece of land that is the topography of who I have become. But beyond that, these essays are explorations into the contradictions, the wonders, the mysteries, and the sometimes-wrenching emotional responses this lifestyle has compelled me to examine." excerpt from the Introduction in the series.
Books are $10 each or the complete set of eight for $75 plus tax, shipping and handling. Each book is 35-55 pages. Cover art by Ceacy Henderson
Books may be purchased in our online store.
" After a short time, I resumed following the tracks straight up the hill where they ended in a large pile of rocks. Perhaps now the mink was sleeping down some dark tunnel beneath the rocks: perhaps I had simply lost the trail, although there was no sign of footprints anywhere. I had expected no more than this, a glimpse into the travels of another being who shared this land, and it was enough. I have noticed that just following my attention wherever it leads me inevitably reveals more than if I go off in search of something particular. It is a way of being available to seeing what is there instead of trying to locate what is not."
excerpt from Book 1
" Like the wings of an angel---feathery, white impressions in the dusting of snow on the frozen surface of the pond. Beneath the ice, as if counterpoint to the tracery of the thinly layered snow, looms a basin of dark water. So startling was the effect that I stopped to gaze at the wing marks, knowing full well their exquisite delicacy did not reveal the violence embedded in this scene. On closer inspection, I saw the tiny footprints of a mouse next to the wing impressions. The mouse prints were delicate too and I wondered what had enticed the mouse out onto the ice in the first place."
excerpt from Book 3
"I confess that I marvel at the human mind when I do things like this. Why, given all the common sense odds of getting stuck, why try it? I don't really see myself as a gambler, but perhaps it is the same kind of thinking that makes folks buy lottery tickets or spend money they can ill afford on slot machines. It's that all-empowering notion of luck."
excerpt from Book 2
"Lost in my own thoughts while driving the tractor, just trundling along the farm road on a foggy morning, I glanced up and saw a doe standing stock still where the grass meets the edge of the woods. She hadn't moved, nor made a sound that I could hear, but rather appeared out of the mist like an apparition. Her fixed gaze off to my left guided my own to the splay-legged silhouette of a newborn fawn. I stopped the tractor , silenced the engine, and waited to see how the doe would handle this sudden and unwelcome intrusion. Her confusion was obvious, she seemed to want to leave, but the fawn, perhaps an hour old, its umbilicus still wet, was wobbling towards its mother in plain view. I waited while the tiny fawn made its unsteady way through the pasture."
excerpt from Book 4
" The stones that surround my fields were placed there by the labor of others who farmed here before me. Just as I bend down to grasp a rock, so too did they stoop to lift and carry one more from the countless many to a pile at the edge of somewhere. These stone piles thread their way throughout New England; an estimated 240,000 miles of walls---each stone touched by a hand, a small gesture of believing in a future."
excerpt from Book 5
"This morning's drive through the clear light of the low, amber trajectory of early sun is a case in point---the way it hits the weathered siding on old red barns, catches the edge of the warped roof lines, gives the oxidized hinges a dull rusty glow. Or the way the striped river road is in shadow and light, frosty dark and sparkly white. Or how passing the wetlands, a whole swamp full of silvery filigree, tiny branches encased in perfect crystalline coatings, holding that cool blue until the moment that the sunlight crests a nearby ridge and rains its amber down on all that frozen refraction, dazzling daylight of 10,000 facets. How can you not love December light like that?"
excerpt from Book 7
"Imagine this; it is a cool and breezy evening in mid-June. The time is half an hour before midnight ; the sky is clear and the moon is out. There is just enough ambient light that as you step out of the house into the garden, you can see floating in and out of the trees, fluttering just above the blooming peonies, irises, and anemones, the shadowy presence of a dozen wild moths. Five inches from wing tip to wing tip, mysterious and delicate, they weave up and down in the silky darkness."
excerpt from Book 6
