Welcome to Litsy!

A really beautiful collection of essays for #doublespin this month - some super short, some extended, all thoughtful and interesting.

The two essays on archeological digs in Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie were most interesting. This is a beautifully written book touching on nature, time, people, and traditions. I listened to the audiobook during #20in4

The trees all around....
Green ferns in the groin of an oak. Green moss cloaking a stone. Voice of a crow. Voice of a chiding wren. A smirr of rain too soft to possess a voice. Voice of the shrew, the black slug. Voice of the forest... Did you hear something move out the corner of your eye? The same moth come back? Or another leaf falling? You are not lost, just melodramatic. The path is at your feet. see? Now carry on.

The vision of the land stayed with me. That night, in my dark bunk, I tried to imagine it by moonlight, the whole plain covered in caribou. In truth, it almost reminded me of Scotland. The ice-worn hills were almost like Highland Perthshire but on a vaster scale, and the colours brighter and light more intense, and there were no roads or towns, no pylons or farms or dams or big houses....

Train reading.
(Haven't done this for a while!)

I bailed on two audiobooks in a row before settling on this luminous collection of essays. Archeological sites in Alaska & the Orkneys, a long ago trip to Tibet, family, health, the natural world: Kathleen Jamie writes about these things with a poetic precision I adore. Words like smur and blaeberries are performed in the #audiobook with a proper Scottish accent by Cathleen McCarron.

The landscape was astonishing. There was nothing I wanted to do more than sit quietly and look at it, come to terms with its vastness.

(My photo of the Burren in Ireland, although Kathleen Jamie‘s quote refers to the Alaskan tundra)

#bedtimereads
Another lovely essay collection from Kathleen Jamie. This one has a more human focus than her previous. The two longest chapters are both concerned with archaeological digs. What spoke most to me, though, were the pieces following the resurgence of her pre-motherhood self now her kids have left home; there's a sense of opening out, but also loss, and a drive to look back to previous generations as she goes forward.

Thank you @RachelO and @jenniferw88 😘
I've been wanting to read this for ages!

It‘s taken me a little while to slow down into this one, but I‘m there now - and of course it‘s beautiful.

In the longest essay, Jamie joins an archaeological dig in a Yup‘ik village in Alaska, learning about the community, the land and the importance of the dig to Yup‘ik memory and life. And slowing down herself, to watch the land, the wildlife, the people.

Kathleen Jamie‘s new book arrived today - my favourite Scottish poet - this time prose. Very happy 😊
The book starts: she‘s in a West Highland cave...on the next page the bones of a bear are discovered - which turn out to be 45,000 years old...