Building a home

A sub­urb doesn’t seem like a very log­i­cal loca­tion for the devel­op­ment of an eco-vil­lage. Liv­ing in har­mo­ny with nature while putting up some ter­raced hous­es, can you imag­ine it? Y. and I step out of our back door and into the mud. Zuiderveld is locat­ed in a swampy area that was tra­di­tion­al­ly used for agriculture. …

A move by moonlight

The big deliv­ery van races across the sea bed. The lit­tle boy turns the wheel with shiny eyes. With his arms out­stretched he can just reach it. Far too soon he has to go back into his car seat. It is only when we get out of the Euro­tun­nel that we can ful­ly believe it: …

Dreaming in the dark

The lights are always on. The Christ­mas tree out­side the shop­ping mall, the lap­top on my desk. But tonight I will leave the lights out and vis­it the dark­ness. Even the moon won’t show her face this night. Dark­ness. An uncom­fort­able word. A word wait­ing for Light. Away with the dark­ness of our igno­rance and evil. …

The flowing river

“Look, mush­rooms!” The tiny rental car hic­cups to a stop. The mov­ing box­es slide dan­ger­ous­ly, but we man­age to squeeze past them and out of the car. Fred­dy is already on his knees at the base of an ancient pine tree. Every­where we look, we see mush­rooms pop­ping up from among the fall­en nee­dles and …

Talking to a tree

I hur­ry along the nar­row path. The rain has final­ly over­tak­en me, here in the rel­a­tive wilder­ness at the edge of Read­ing. I know there will be a place to shel­ter around the cor­ner. There it is, the plane tree. Knob­bly, lop­sided and with branch­es that almost reach the ground. Hug­ging it would take four …