From ‘Emergence’ Magazine’……..The Cairns……
by Bernie Bell - 09:01 on 21 July 2025
From ‘Emergence’ Magazine’……..
“As part of our summer of practice, we’re embracing the ritual of reading. A good book under the shade of a tree or in a patch of sun nourishes the imagination during the languorous stretch of the warm months. Inspired by some of our recent conversations, along with recommendations from Emergence contributors, we’ve curated a list of books—some new releases, some classics—to add to your summer reading list.
Rivers, Forests, and Whales
If you enjoyed our new interview with acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane, be sure to read Is a River Alive? which journeys across three bodies of water, the Río Los Cedros in Ecuador, the waterways of Chennai in India, and the Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan, to understand the ways rivers are not mere matter, but living, spirited, and willful beings. A constant companion of Robert’s on these rivers was The Epic of Gilgamesh. Dating back to 1800 BCE, the epic is believed to be the oldest surviving written story and tells of the felling of a sacred cedar forest in Mesopotamia by a glory-hungry king, mythologizing when the human relationship with the living world shifted toward domination and destruction. Offering a similar parable for our destruction of the Earth and continual colonial extraction is Ursula K. Le Guin’s speculative fiction, The Word for World Is Forest. Anthropologist Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think draws on four years of fieldwork with the Runa people of the Ecuadorian Amazon to explore how more-than-human beings engage in thinking and meaning-making. Seeing how the forest communicates and can be experienced as an “ecology of selves,” he reimagines individual thinking as a process of becoming that unfolds between living beings. And following on from our recent conversation about translating the language of sperm whales, we also recommend People of the Whale, a novel by Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan. It is both a love story and an exploration of the moral and ethical complexities of hunting a whale—a means of survival, and a symbol of spirituality and rebirth.
Poems and Wisdom
One of our most cherished conversations from the past six months was with acclaimed poet Jane Hirshfield, and we’re spending time this summer revisiting some of her most wonderful works. Ledger registers a series of collective and personal losses both present and imminent, giving language to the well of grief for Earth’s destruction; bearing witness to unending social injustices; and yet never forgetting the enduring mystery and delight of the world. Her anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred gathers poems, prayers, and songs of female mystics across history—healers, teachers, mothers, saints, queens, and seekers. Jane’s commentary alongside these works offers a window into what evolves and what remains essential within the feminine experience of the sacred.
Emergence Essays That Became Books
For our fifth print edition, Time, translator and poet David Hinton wrote “Breath-Space and Seed-Time,” which became part of his latest book Orient—a meditative walk through both the desert of the American Southwest and Ch’an/Zen enlightenment. As in all his works, David combines natural history with classical Chinese poetry to map the mystery of human consciousness and its entanglement with the Cosmos. And The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer grew from an essay of the same name that she wrote for us in 2020. Her new book offers a powerful manifesto on abundance and reciprocity as models for a new economy that operates in right relationship with the Earth.
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Some of my own recommendations…..
I’m reading this at the moment…
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17415
It's not just about stones, it's about Life.
Another recent publication…..
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17082
Some old favourites/old reliables…..
https://theorkneynews.scot/?s=Books+Bernie+Bell
OK – a lot of old favourites/old reliables!
Enjoy!
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The Cairns….
A summing up of the 2025 season by Kevin Kerr…
https://archaeologyorkney.com/2025/07/18/cairns-d29-2025/
PHEW!
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