Combining art with elegy, Beech is the perfect gift for nature lovers, walkers, bedside philosophers, armchair travelers, and anyone else who likes short reads and beautiful photographs.
AgathaO — alter ego of historian and photographer Pleun Bouricius — sees the world as an adventure. She stumbles through it, clutching her camera, along with her much more surefooted hound, who leaps across stone wall and blowdowns and circles among the trees, hardly ever getting entangled in the barbed wire left by generations of farmers.
While no one was looking, the New England forest grew back in the 20th century. Now, it’s under threat of death by a thousand cuts — development, solar farms, and hordes of imported insects. AgathaO asks the reader to love the forest first, and then think about what it means to do so.
Beech threads history, art, science, and philosophy into personal essays and stunning photographs, and bears witness to the importance of taking the time to just be in the woods and enjoy it, in all seasons and all weather. “To be free to fall, get dirty, get up, walk this way and that, and at every turn be reminded of an entire world that exists just for itself — fragrant, smelly, gorgeous in all its ways — that is happiness.”
Start your read with a sample essay online: Imprints onto the Universe
Beech is available at the AgathaOPhoto Etsy Shop, from the author if you live in the Hilltowns, and at Amazon
I am happy to do readings/author events at your organization or group, just give me a holler by email. You can check out my schedule on the Events page.
