There are places we meet briefly and with which we have short, passionate affairs. For a period of hours, days, maybe weeks, we love them intensely. We become so enamoured that we wish we could give up our normal lives and stay there forever. They have the potential to develop into longer love affairs, but ultimately, we have to leave them behind.
An oasis on the edge of the Sahara where the silence of the desert is filled with the collective moan of scores of camels. The eerie, mist-choked hills of Sicily on the road to Mount Etna, green shoots and buildings poking through hardened lava. The enchanted, forest path to Hareshaw Linn waterfall, so detached that it feels like another dimension. A string of bays on the Turkish coast where, at night, the fish trail luminescence in the water and meteors light up the sky.
These are all places I have loved briefly and ardently. Yet if I ever returned to these fondly remembered places, the chances are that I would never recapture that first magical meeting. If I was to take up permanent residence, I imagine the love affair would fade, until I would wonder what I ever saw in the place that I gave up everything for. So although sometimes they may haunt me with their potential, we’re destined not to have a future together.
There are places with which we develop more lasting relationships. Perhaps for a discrete period in time when we reside there, perhaps places we visit repeatedly over months or years. For me, there is the small mining village in Yorkshire that once smelled like the sulphur of the pits before they were all closed. The wooden cabin in the forest that I often retreat to. The exuberance and grandeur of Rome. These are places that court us with memory, with nostalgia. Places we begin to know a little and imagine that we’re at home there. They speak to something inside us.
And then there is that other place: our soul place. The place we arrive at and exhale; where we sigh with comfort and recognition, because we know we’re home. The place we go to for solace when we’re miserable. And where we go to experience joy. The place that calls you so that you must return, over and over again. Mine is a small tidal island in the north sea, dominated by a lighthouse. It is a place that is constant, but constantly shifting. A place that has many moods. Its smell is seaweed and salt; its sound is the sea and the birds.
Your relationship with your soul place is a kind of chemistry. You might visit somewhere similar and not feel it. I’ve travelled to more than twenty countries and been awe struck and felt glad to be alive, but I haven’t yet found another soul place. Perhaps it’s about our history: the way I have felt here and the experiences we have had. Perhaps it’s because I can conjure the moods of this place and know its history in my bones. Perhaps it is all of these things and none of them. It’s a connection that I can’t define, but can only feel. I know that I will always feel different here than in any other place. The masks drop away and I am myself. I don’t need anything else except to be here. In my soul place I am free.
How wondrous, extraordinary, and rare to have such a place, Andrea. Thank you for sharing it so beautifully with all of us. Mega hugs! 🙂
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I’m very lucky to have it Teagan, thanks 🙂
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A soul place. I love that concept. Now you’ve got me thinking of what mine would be.
When I visit beautiful places, I wonder if I lived there if the beauty would become second nature to me. I suppose that’s only natural, but hopefully if I tuned into the surroundings now and then, I’d recapture some of that early wonder.
What a beautifully written post. As always. 🙂
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Thanks Carrie, I think there’s an element of not noticing what’s close by and longing for a far off place, fortunately my soul-place is just along the road 🙂
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Oh Andrea, this is brilliant. Your island meets my Tramore!
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Thanks Jean, yes I think they have the same magic.
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This is nothing other than brilliant. Your prose and your philosophy and your photos touch me deeply. Yes I have places in which I have affairs, too, and places where I form a type of relationship. But the soulful place? Now, that’s the place we need to be when we feel loss and joy, pain and happiness. I try to make my home my soulful place. But besides that, there’s a path by the SF bay that I have walked on so often, prayed on, wished on, loved on, that even though it’s now thousands of miles away, I know that’s where I’ll want my ashes released when my soul is free.
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Thanks Pam, that path certainly sounds like a soul-place and one you can go back to in your memory even though it’s now far away.
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Your soul place looks exactly how mine looks, Andrea. Stunning photos!
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I’m not surprised as a fellow lighthouse lover Jill 🙂
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Stunning place, Andrea. I love that it is constant and shifting, and cyclical. I can see why it brings you back home to yourself as it has many to safety, in the waters.
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Thanks Diana, it is indeed, every time I go back the landscape has been moved by the waters, but it’s always there.
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A sentimental–no, passionate–connection with place. Love the pictures you’ve painted. *sigh* Your language is poetic. Stunning.
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Thanks Tess 🙂
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I love this post so much! 💖💖
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Thanks Trini 🙂
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I think we all have a soul place somewhere we can breathe and be our self … Cumdudi is mine a little
Cove in west wales where I used to visit but now I live.
I have a number of favourite music tracks that I adore but never ever buy because when I hear them they stay special to me . Thanks for the post …loved it
Cherryx
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Thanks Cherry – I love that approach to those favourite music tracks so that they never become too familiar to love 🙂
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This evokes extraordinary feelings, memories… I’ve been trying to think of where/what/when for me… but need to further reflect. There is a passage in Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” – I’ve always been too scared to look for the passage again in case it’s not as good as I remember – a horse and soldier came down to the stream to drink, there was cherry blossom (or cherries)… it was one of those moments (says Hardy) that is remembered forever…
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Thanks Bruce, you make me want to read the book, I’ll add it to my list 🙂
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These are fantastic photos. The first one evokes questions, is the storm coming, has a storm left? I could, and did, contemplate on that picture for several minutes. Thank you for the experience.
I’ve traveled several countries and states in the U.S and found a connection in two places: Abiquiu, New Mexico and on top of the pyramid of the sun in Teotihuacán, outside Mexico City. Both took me far outside myself where I felt a spiritual and emotional connection.
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Thanks Mona, I’m glad you found those places where you found that connection.
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I love your photograph of the lighthouse and the stormy sky.
I so understand what you are saying about being yourself in your soul place, and you are so lucky that you can go there often. I am so far away from my soul places. That ‘mask’ has grown into my skin and cannot be separated from me anymore.
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Thanks Inese, I hope you can find another soul place where you can be yourself.
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Thank you Andrea! 🙂
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Wonderful piece and pictures. I never though of hearing camels moan. Your words create a deep sense of place. I’ve been living in my apartment for three and a half years now. It has been occurring to me lately that this is my soul place. I am centered here. I can let go of expecting my self to be any thing else but myself. I am free – (most of the time).
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Thanks – it was a haunting sound – and fun to see them roll on their backs in the sand like dogs 🙂 It’s great that you’re living in your soul place.
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I love the idea of the place where we can be our true self at home in both our skin and our place in the world. i found that place at 34 and got to live there for 27 years. You described that experience beautifully. What is so wondrous is that even when i had to leave it…i have it always in my heart and memory. I DON’T NEED TO OWN IT OR VISIT IT…IT’S MINE!
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It’s wonderful to be able to visit your soul place, but you’re right, you don’t need to visit to feel its effects.
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Lovely writing and message.
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Thanks Alethea.
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I feel this way in high desert areas of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado (also known as the Colorado Plateau). My soul knows I’m home by the smell of the sage and the slickrock under my feet and the first call of the raven. Thanks for taking me back there today!
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I love deserts Sunshine, I suspect I’d feel very at home in your soul places.
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How beautiful, both the words and the photos. I know what you mean about that soul connection. Even if it’s a place we just visit, somehow we feel connected. Love how you made a setting into a character of its own.
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Thanks Lori.
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Gorgeous pictures, and I’m loving the blue color scheme you have going on. Don’t know if you’ve always had the blue background or if it’s accentuated by the pictures, but it’s lovely.
Your soul place sounds perfect. We all need a retreat like that. When I was little, my soul place was high up in an apple tree. I don’t really have one now — hard to have one when you have kids who need you constantly. So, I guess for now, my soul place is my writing.
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Thanks Kate, no the blue background is new – I change it with the seasons 🙂 I love that your soul place was up an apple tree – what a great place to have one. And I love that you describe writing as your soul place now – so true!
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A woman after my own heart. There are many places where the soul resides or has resided I think, but the older I get the more I realise that I don’t need to physically go to them anymore to feel that connectedness with the universe. It’s all in my head. I can be there anytime – it’s a kind of magic…
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True, they have that effect wherever you are 🙂
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Beautiful photos and writing! I have had two poetry teacher/mentors in my life. One was from New York City, the other from American’s heartland region. Later, he moved from the heartland to a desert region of Southern California. He told me that it took two years before he was able to write freely about the desert landscapes, as he still focused his poetry on the Midwest images he carried in his imagination. My NYC mentor said, “Of course, because the desert is just the prairie gone bad.” Love all discussions of places, how we interact with them, how they influence our imaginations, our writing, and our overall sensibility. You talk about knowing the place’s “history” in your bones. Such a nice thought!
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Thanks Carla – interesting thoughts about accepting a new place. I lived in a city for a while but my soul longed for the sea – I could never get used to it.
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Beautiful series of photos, and yes ~ you have described perhaps the best feeling ever when traveling, when we begin to tell ourselves and others “we could give up our normal lives and stay there forever.” I can see it here.
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Thanks Randall, yes that is a wonderful feeling when we connect with a place so much, but it’s perhaps as well we don’t get the chance to find out!
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It’s a beautiful soul place, that tidal island. I often dream of wild island places and think, “If only…” This thought is usually punctuated by a sigh, as the chance of me travelling to such a place is unlikely, thus I don’t have a soul place, although sitting on the sofa with my dog’s chin resting on my lap could be said to be a soul place in my own home!
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Fortunately the island isn’t far from home, so I get to go there often – there is actually one house on the island (too small for anything else) and I’d absolutely love to live in it!
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a long sighing yes! to this beautiful post!! our home of homes that is beyond all utterance!
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Thanks Cybele. Home of homes, I like that!
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An interesting perspective, Andrea, on the place where the soul feels most at home. Makes me think.
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Thanks Cynthia.
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I think there is a tendency for many of us to take a place for granted once we’ve spend an extended period of time there. A shame, really, that we can’t hold onto those “soul place moments” for more of a lifetime.
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We do too often take places for granted, especially those that we can access anytime. But the pull of my soul place has never waned.
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Wow. Poetry, this one. And you describe each type of place so well. I have always paid attention to the places for which I feel a strong affinity. They can be so healing . . . thank you for sharing such beautiful thoughts with such lilting words.
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Thanks Kay, this place has always healed me when I need it.
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I’m so in love with this one! I’m in love with all of your posts though. 😉
I am a wandering soul, and I have to travel places regularly to feel like I’m truly living. I don’t want to be a nomad, as I love having a beautiful home with the kitties, but I need to experience different places. The Oregon coast has definitely become my soul place. It changes constantly, but it’s still the same. Every time I’m there, I feel endless.
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Thanks Britt 🙂 Just like my island – the sea shifts the landscape from day to day, but it’s always there as a constant.
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That coalescing of time, feeling, circumstance and atmosphere are a rare thing, you capture it beautifully, as ever accompanied by wonderful photos. I love lighthouses, they are wonderful places filled with so many stories. I wish I could set off and explore somewhere right now!
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Thanks Ste, I’m a huge lighthouse fan – this is my favourite but we’re lucky to have quite a few of them around here!
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What a cool concept you expressed in a soul place. I have had love affairs with places but when I returned to them I didn’t feel the same. I think some places can only be visited once and never again. Others can be returned to and cherished each time. 🙂
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Sometimes there’s just the right mix of circumstances that makes a place special once and not again, so we’re lucky to find the ones that we have those long term affairs with.
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Yes. Sometimes we change or the place changes and that magical connection is gone. But when we find places we can go back to, it’s really awesome.
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Andrea, your soul place looks beautiful. I have encountered a few soul places, but whether they would have become my forever soul place I didn’t ever get long enough to find out. At the moment I am still searching.
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I hope you find one Gallivanta 🙂
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I so enjoyed traveling to your favorite places, Andrea, and your rich descriptions. One of my favorite things about traveling is having the memory of magical places. Sometimes it is difficult to leave the place, yes, and you’re right, it’s never the same returning; but the magic, it stays with us forever.
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Thanks Jet, yes, it gives us many rich memories.
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Your soul place sounds very much like my home here on the Point. I love your writing, Andrea! ❤
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My soul place is beautiful Jennifer, but I suspect if I got to visit the Point, it would have some competition 🙂
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Andrea, this post is mesmerising. Your photos alone are glorious, the skyline with the lighthouse standing tall and straight and so white against the looming, ever darkening skyline, which then breaks out into wide open blue. I realised I held my breath as I read of your travels, described so evocatively (and what marvellous adventures you have had!) and then, when you brought us so expertly back to your true soul place, I exhaled with you. It is wonderful that you’ve found such a beautiful and wild soul place. I would love to live somewhere like that! I used to feel like this everytime I returned home from California to England when I visited my family – that feeling of exhaling, I’m home now. Yet a part of me will never leave California. The photos I shared in yesterday’s post are from one of those soul places of mine. I spent so many years there with my children. I know if I were to go there today, I would exhale and breathe in the salt and listen to the sea birds and I would close my eyes and know only calm. So maybe that would be my soul place, that place by the sea in California…Gorgeous post Andrea, beautifully written as always, just lovely…
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Thank you Sherri – your love for your soul place came across in that post – I can still visualise you dancing on the beach 🙂 I don’t live far from mine so could visit every day if I had the time! But I would so love to be the person who gets to live in the one cottage that’s on the island 🙂
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Oh that would be so wonderful 🙂
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My brief affair was with Pacific Grove, California. A motel (yes, motel, not hotel) across the street from the ocean with the windows left open. The sea otters all over the gritty beach. All in a year where nothing had been glitzed up, no restaurant or store chains, etc.
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Sounds like a wonderful affair Luanne, there’s no rhyme or reason why a place speaks to us, but we know when they do 🙂
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So true. I thought I was returning home when I first went to Jamaica. I didn’t feel that way the 2nd time.
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Andrea, I adore your description and photos of your sanctuary. I have lived in many places and have seen the sun rise over many different cities. I use to be drawn to city life. But now the mountains and solitude of rural life speak to me. I do believe we can have many sanctuaries in our lives. For me at this moment its country life.
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Thanks Kath. It’s always been the coast for me in one form or another, but I’ve never really been in the mountains – I suspect they’d speak to me too.
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I use to think it was the coast for me too Andrea. But since living near a mountain I feel so at home and my soul sours when I look at it.
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What a thought provoking post Andrea, thank you.
My soul place is in Tuscany – a little village in the hills outside Arezzo.
Everything seems possible there.
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Thanks Francesca, your soul place sounds lovely – ‘everything seems possible there’ sounds like a great definition of a soul place.
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Your creativity in defining this concept with such heart is amazing.
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Thanks Julia, much appreciated.
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Your pictures and words, Andrea, create a longing for a connection with this “soul” place. Beautifully done.
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Thanks Marylin.
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Great line, Andrea. — “There are places we meet briefly and with which we have short, passionate affairs.” So true.
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The smell of seaweed and salt is the smell of home for me. Where my heart is at home.
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I wholeheartedly agree.
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So beautiful, Andrea. You’ve captured the feeling and essence of these magical places, so different for many of us. The first one that comes to mind, for me, is late at night going outside in the middle of a heavy snowstorm and listening to the snow fall and feeling caught up in it’s gentle protection.
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Thanks Pat, that sounds like a special place and time.
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They are, Andrea — all are special times.
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I’ve wanted to reply to your post for a while but struggled to think of any one place that I could call my ‘Soul Place’. Like you I have had profound, serendipitous, even divine moments, in many places over the years – what I call the ‘Beauty of the Moment’ – deep feelings of wonderment, unfettered joy, love – my heart feeling as if it were overflowing; a ‘oneness’ with nature. Almost always these emotions were triggered by nature – by birdsong, smell, touch, wind, and sun – especially the sun; the feel of a place – its ambiance – what Richard Jefferies called the ‘Spirit of Place’ (His whole autobiography which I prefer to call by his original title ‘Soul Life’ is an affirmation of these feelings).
I suppose if there’s one special place it’s my birthplace where I hear sparrows and starlings … and the Green Woodpecker laughing from the Ash, and the Cuckoo from the copse across the fields … .I haven’t been back there for many years but I return to it often in my mind.
I’ve come to realise that my ‘Soul Place’ is within me!
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Thanks for your thoughtful reply Clive. I like that we have that power of connecting to a place for a short time, as well as having places that are permanently special – I think we carry all of those places within us.
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Thank you Andrea,
Are you familiar with the writings of Richard Jefferies – this short passage from his autobiography, ‘A Story of My Heart’ – says it all for me.
“There is a hill to which I used to resort … The labour of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home. On a warm summer day the slow continued rise required continual effort, which carried away the sense of oppression. The familiar everyday scene was soon out of sight; I came to other trees, meadows, and fields; I began to breathe a new air and to have a fresher aspiration … Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself.”
The Story of my Heart, by Richard Jefferies, 1883.
I first read this when I was about 14 and for the first time felt that someone else understood me – our experiences, thoughts and feelings and passions were as one!
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That’s a lovely passage Clive, definitely a journey to a soul place. I wasn’t familiar with Jefferies but after reading some of your posts I downloaded some of his works for my Kindle, many of them are available free, so I’ll dip into them over time.
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I hope you like them Andrea, he was a visionary author, way ahead of his time. One of the first ‘Nature Writers’. You can read many of his essays here: https://richardjefferies.wordpress.com/
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Thanks Clive, I’ll let you know when I’ve read some.
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You can read more of his essays here:
https://richardjefferies.wordpress.com/
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