Journeying in Place: Reflections from a Country Garden

by Gunilla Norris and Gunilla Norris

Book Overview

More meditations on the sacredness of daily experience by the author ofBeing Home, Becoming Bread, andSharing Silence. Gunilla Norris records her observations on the inner life as seen in the turning of the seasons in her Connecticut garden.Journeying in Placeis filled with the joy of living.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517597624
• ISBN13: 9780517597620
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 93 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Tenderly observant

Gunilla Norris lives in a farmhouse on two acres of Connecticut woods and meadow. That is the small place that opens her to a quiet passion for the depth and breadth of life. "I have come to know that in these two acres there is intense and quiet activity that is happening twenty-four hours a day," she says. "I miss most of it. I get caught up in what must be done and therefore fail to experience the sunsets, the budding of the raspberries, the rusting of old farm implements in the earth, the building of wasp nests, and the death of old trees. But I feel the vibration of it all and I want to know this eventfulness better." The book is her way of exploring, and a gift of knowing that she generously shares. Reading Norris's soft, tenderly observant prose, I feel that I know her woods and meadows and their seasons, and that I know her through the landscape she loves. And what I learn from reading her writing is the importance of the tiny things we often fail to see. The baby mice in the nest on the garage shelf, for instance, that show Norris (and me), how new we are: "Each time I come into newness I, too, am pink like this, pulsing, and vulnerable...New relationships, new dwellings, new jobs, new understandings. My eyes do not quite function. My skin is paper thin. It is always a sheer time, an intimate time, when, like all newborns, I need protection badly." That's a lot to be learned from a nest of baby mice! But it is in these exquisitely detailed observations that Norris shines, and brings us close to the center of her passion for place. by Susan Wittig Albert for Story Circle Book Reviews www.storycirclebookreviews reviewing books by, for, and about women

This book is one of my all time favorites

This is Ms. Norris' best book, in my opinion. I own all of her books, and by far this is my favorite.

Healing a Broken Spirit

My mother died unexpectedly in August 1995. She fell alseep and never woke up. For weeks after her death I could find no solace. My beloved garden lost all meaning to me. Several months later, in early November, I was browsing through the garden section of a bookstore I visited once or twice a year. A small hardcover book, wedged between large volumes of gardening advice and gorgeous picture books, caught my eye, and I took it down from the shelf. Its title, Journeying In Place: Reflections from a Country Garden, seemed rather long for a book of less than one hundred pages. I opened it and began reading. It is All Saints'Day, a year after the author, Gunilla Norris, found her mother dead. Sadness gripped me as I read the words that I could not utter, the words that would help me begin my journey back from grief: "The killing frost has happened both in my garden and in my life. I have lost my mother."Gardeners understand and accept life's cycles better than most, I believe--the seasons, birth, death. Norris's "little" book focuses on her garden and the life in and around it through one year. In it she describes the spiritual,the "saints," that inhabit her two-acre plot of Connecticut farmland. From spring peepers to a feral cat, from dahlias to day lilies, from compost to harvest, she guides the reader through four seasons, discovering the "holy" in the everyday, and in doing so, finds meaning and peace. As the geese once again fly south, heralding the coming winter, Norris is uplifted. "I think of my mother and somehow I feel her presence inside me...No love is ever lost in this universe. No matter what season, what year, what place, love will always be turned into new soil." This book found me during my darkest season, and Norris's words helped heal my broken spirit.