After only a 15 hour flight, I arrive in a different world. In England, the landscape is green, studded with oak, beech, conifers, and in the country, where I live, populated with horses, sheep, and cattle on undulating hills. I study cloud formations and colors, there: clouds are not only gray, but lavender, yellow, pink,… Continue reading NEW MEXICO
Author: Kathleen Hall
September
Back on track, I hope. This has been, reportedly, the worst British summer on record. It is also the summer I had family visitors. They will never again believe that summer here can be glorious, hot, and good for the beach. We were lucky, though. The trip to Northumberland with Lora was often sunny,… Continue reading September
After the children leave
I come into their room to tidy up. The fragrance of their breath lingers, their dreams whisper in corners . Small hollows in the pillows remain, waiting for nestling heads. – I won’t change a thing. Not yet. I walk through the August-bleached fields and shaded woods we explored together, and hear the echo… Continue reading After the children leave
More North – June, 2008
Although we spent a night in so-so hotel near a village called Cranster, and had a good meal of fresh fish beside the North Sea, it was really only a stopover on our way to the Yorkshire Dales, another high point of our trip. As we traveled into Yorkshire, the countryside became spare, sheep fields… Continue reading More North – June, 2008
FORAGING —
It isn’t the cost of vegetables and fruits which periodically sends me scampering to the fields and woods to scout for wild food. It’s the self-sufficiency of it. It’s about reaching back through generations to glimpse my ancestors, to experience an instinct going back to human beginnings, and to relate to the universal need to… Continue reading FORAGING —
FAGGOTS
I had faggots for lunch yesterday. Two round, dark brown balls appeared from the pub’s kitchen, nestled in a soft bed of mashed potatoes. No, don’t be vile. Not testes, and not made from bundles of wood or of anything else, except liver, ground and spiced. I looked up the word in my Collins English… Continue reading FAGGOTS
The Birds
The boat which will ferry us to Inner Farne Island and the bird sanctuary looks like a big rowboat with a little wooden cabin tacked onto the front, and the queue waiting to board is very long. Our hearts sink. People pile on, one after the other, until the boat looks like a colorful octopus… Continue reading The Birds
York minster and Belford
The sun shone on the morning we went to see the Minster. I wondered why York Minster is called a Minster instead of a Cathedral, so I looked it up on Wictionary and in the Dictionary, but there isn’t an answer in either place. It’s just a Big Church, the same as for the cathedrals. … Continue reading York minster and Belford
York
We find our hotel, The Minster, with no trouble. An alleyway off the main road leads to a parking area, and we roll our bags up the slight incline to enter a warren of twisting and turning corridors to find our rooms. They are clean, comfortable and adequate, but not more; the hotel looks like… Continue reading York
Northward bound—-
The trigger for our trip is the arrival of a visitor from the US, my sister. We hope that the days and days of planning by Bernard, the best travel agent around, guarantees a comfortable and well-organized journey north. There are always unknowns. That’s part of the fun, they say. But at our ages, unknowns… Continue reading Northward bound—-