This month, I’m writing words and posting images relating to the landscape of memory. I hope to write poems most days and also share photos, quotes, and more prosaic thoughts related in some way to memory, nostalgia, longing for place, remembering and forgetting, landscape, dreamscape, landscape’s memory and memory’s landscape, the intersection of the layered historical physical world with personal memory, the frames that both landscape and memory use to contain and order our focus, the landscape of childhood, the landscape of devastation, how memories lie and tell the truth, the fragmentation of memory, how landscapes shape us and our memories, and so on. All the posts will be linked to the Introductory Page as they are posted. Thanks for visiting.

Today, a few of my favourite descriptions of landscapes (seascapes, skyscapes) from novels, including crime fiction, that I’ve read. There are so many books with great descriptions of the physical world, the scenery; these are just some I bothered to write down.

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“Walked out to the end of one of the jetties, stood at the extreme edge, and watched the choppy waves thudding apathetically against the concrete foundations. The air was a trinity of dampness, salt, and seagull cries.” ― Mind’s Eye (1993) by Håkan Nesser

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“There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled wave that broke on the sand. I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All the heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me. With every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a piece of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time.” ― The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus

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“Hulda had always found the drive to the airport bleak and rather dispiriting. The dark lava-fields extended on either side, empty, windswept and flat, broken only by the conical form of Keilir and other low mountains to the south, and merging into the treacherous grey sea to the north. It was a dangerous area, full of hidden volcanic craters and clouds of steam, scarred by the violent forces at work beneath the earth’s crust, here, where Iceland straddled the divide between two continental plates.” ― The Darkness (2015) by Ragnar Jonasson

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“Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest-fst! it was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.” ― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain

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“The summer came to life. It burst from gray to fierce blue and gold in the blink of an eye; the air pealed with grasshoppers and lawnmowers, swirled with branches and bees and dandelion seeds, it was soft and sweet as whipped cream, and over the wall the wood was calling us in the loudest of silent voices, it was shaking out all its best treasures to welcome us home. Summer tossed out a fountain of ivy tendrils, caught us straight under the breastbones and tugged; summer, redeemed and unfurling in front of us, a million years long.” ― In the Woods (2007) by Tana French

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“It was early morning and already hot. There was a strong odor of earth and grass drying in the sun. We climbed among tall shrubs, on indistinct paths that led toward the tracks. When we reached an electrical pylon we took off our smocks and put them in the schoolbags, which we hid in the bushes. Then we raced through the scrubland, which we knew well, and flew excitedly down the slope that led to the tunnel. The entrance on the right was very dark: we had never been inside that obscurity. We held each other by the hand and entered. It was a long passage, and the luminous circle of the exit seemed far away. Once we got accustomed to the shadowy light, we saw lines of silvery water that slid along the walls, large puddles. Apprehensively, dazed by the echo of our steps, we kept going. Then Lila let out a shout and laughed at the violent explosion of sound. Immediately I shouted and laughed in turn. From that moment all we did was shout, together and separately: laughter and cries, cries and laughter, for the pleasure of hearing them amplified.” ― My Brilliant Friend (2012) by Elena Ferrante

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“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks — all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.” ― Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf

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“The morning drifted blue and white over Älvsborgsfjorden Bay, the light lucid as if it had been scrubbed clean. Stena Line ferried people to Denmark as though nothing had happened.” ― Death Angels (1997) by Åke Edwardson

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“Monday morning, start of a new week, air bright as ice in a crystal glass, brandy-gold sun pouring from delft-blue sky, the old bracken glowing on the rolling moors, the trees still pied with their unblasted leaves, the pastures still green with their unmuddied grass, as October runs into November and thinks it’s September still.” ― The Wood Beyond (1996) by Reginald Hill

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“Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.” ― Swann’s Way (1913) by Marcel Proust

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“‘I’ve never seen anything like this landscape before,’ Lindman said. ‘Not in the west, not up in Härjedalen. Here Sweden simply slopes down to the sea and ends. All this mud and fog. It’s very strange. I’m trying to find my feet in a landscape that’s completely alien to me.’ Linda mumbled that fog was fog, mud was mud. What could possibly be strange about something so ordinary?“ ― Before the Frost (2004) by Henning Mankell

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“[T]he whole region, with its blast furnaces, slag heaps, abandoned railway tracks where freight wagons rusted, its lines of identical and neat and tidy terraced houses, sometimes brightened up by allotments, was like a conservatory of the first Industrial Age in Europe. Jed had been impressed at the time by the menacing density of the forests that, after scarcely a century of inactivity, surrounded the factories. … These industrial colossi, where once was concentrated the bulk of German productive capacity, were now rusted, half-collapsed, and plants colonized the former workshops, creeping between ruins that they gradually covered with impenetrable jungle.” ― The Map and the Territory (2010) by Michel Houellebecq

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“This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” ― The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“We who trade in landskips see the world not as it is but as it will be. When I walk in the park, which is not yet a park but an expanse of ground hitherto not enhanced but degraded by my work in it, I take little note of the ugly wounds where the earth has been heaved about to make banks and declivities to match those of my plan. I see only that the outline has been soundly drawn for the great picture I have designed. It is for Time to fill it with colour and to add bulk to those spare lines — Time aided by Light and Weather, I suppose I should say as well, aided by God’s will, but it seems to me that to speak of the Almighty in these days is to invoke misfortune. It is more certain and less contentious to note that Water also is essential.” ― Peculiar Ground (2017) by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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“Places are supposed to look smaller when you go back to them, but my road just looked schizoid. A couple of the houses had had nifty little makeovers involving double glazing and amusing faux-antique pastel paint; most of them hadn’t. Number 16 looked like it was on its last legs: the roof was in tatters, there was a pile of bricks and a dead wheelbarrow by the front steps, and at some point in the last twenty years someone had set the door on fire. In Number 8, a window on the first floor was lit up, gold and cozy and dangerous as hell.” ― Faithful Place (2010) by Tana French

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“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads. It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” ― All The Light We Cannot See (2014) by Anthony Doerr

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“On the outside of the island, beyond the bare rock, there was a stand of dead forest. It lay right in the path of the wind and for many hundreds of years had tried to grow directly into the teeth of every storm, and had thus acquired an appearance all its own. From a passing boat it was obvious that each tree was stretching away from the wind; they crouched and twisted, and many of them crept. Eventually the trunks broke or rotted and then sank, the dead trees supporting or crushing those still green at the top. All together they formed a tangled mass of stubborn resignation. The ground was shiny with brown needles, except where the spruces had decided to crawl instead of stand, their greenery luxuriating in a kind of frenzy, damp and glossy as if in a jungle. This forest was called “the magic forest.” It had shaped itself with slow and laborious care, and the balance between survival and extinction was so delicate that even the smallest change was unthinkable.” — The Summer Book (1972) by Tove Jansson

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“Snow is bruised lilac in half-lite: such pure solace.” — Cloud Atlas (2010) by David Mitchell

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Featured image: “the sea … will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere.” Beach, ocean, sky – Jekyll Island, GA, Sept. 2014