At Home in the English Countryside

“A stillness so complete, you hear / the whispering inside of you”

-Jack Gilbert, “Betrothed

During the most recent London riots, I was ambling through the Wye Valley with family, staying in a 12th-century monks’ cottage, and meditating on the nature of peace. A seed was then planted in my mind about how necessary the natural world is to me, perhaps to all of us. I love it for its unassuming present-tense state of being, how it seems to lack all ambition in its persistence to thrive. Perhaps that is why settling in to our new cottage in rural Hertfordshire this week, and getting to know the surrounding meadows and woods, has felt so deeply restorative.

Today during one of our country walks, we came upon a field of horses, who approached us curiously but cautiously, and seemed to embody this alert-but-strife-less state. It seems the more I can approach my life and art the way this colt approached us strangers, the more I might abide in this place that is at once vital and content.

Because the visual landscape has been so much a part of this experience, here are some photographs I took over the past few days of the surrounding area.

It is a green beyond anything I have ever known. Next week, we return to the beiges of Southern California for a visit. But the green, having found its way into my core, goes with me.