Description
Book SynopsisYou are invited to consider a more graceful way of travelling through life. With arresting clarity, this slim spiritual companion offers vignettes of forty travellers and the few, ordinary things they carried with them - from place to place, from day to day, from birth to death. What Thoreau took to Walden Pond. What Thomas Merton packed for his final trip to Asia. What Annie Dillard keeps in her writing tent. What Edward Abbey and a friend packed (and forgot to pack) for a float trip down the Colorado River. What an impoverished cook served M. F. K. Fisher for dinner. Gandhi's possessions at the time of his death. These vignettes create a spare poetry, a meditation on unencumbered living. In its own quiet way, this book ponders the light by which we travel, the light that guides our way - our travelling light. Not a 'simple living' book, reciting tips for how to pinch pennies or get rid of clutter, but a book to be savoured slowly, to remind us what is truly essential.
Trade Review"'How much should I carry with me?' is the quintessential question for any journey, especially the journey of life. Herein you’ll find sage, sly, wonderfully subversive advice." —Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature
Table of ContentsOn Traveling Light Thomas Merton John Muir Henry Beston Marcel Duchamp Annie Dillard Matsuo Basho Edward Abbey Father Zossima Dolores Garcia Henry David Thoreau The Other Henry Thoreau Will Baker A Celtic Woman Father Terence Werner Herzog Raymond Carver Sue Ephraim M'Ikiara Japheth M. Ryder Emma "Grandma" Gatewood Ishmael Fermina Daza Peter Matthiessen John Jack Eric Hoffer Bilbo Baggins Bill Wasovwich The Hermit of Tailaoshan Jesus of Nazareth George Washington Sears William Least Heat Moon Arctic Tern Frank O’Malley Kamo no Chomei David and Goliath Dorothy Day Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton Robert Pirsig Peace Pilgrim Nellie Bly Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Sources
