"The act of recording a life, in healthy solitude and active connection to loved terrain, is also the act of creating a life," writes Hannah Hinchman in this beautifully illustrated volume filled with her pencil and pen sketches, watercolor pictures, and detailed drawings of plants, landscapes, and animals. Referring to selections from 25 years of journal keeping, Hinchman salutes this spiritual practice as one of decanting the stuff of life.
The author shares her recommendations for the best pens, pencils, paints, and papers for fashioning illuminated journals. She spends a chapter exploring the fluid and wide-ranging intuitive movements of attention. She shows various ways to enjoy the patterns, textures, and designs in nature. After a meditation upon Thoreau's Walden Pond, she demonstrates her own interest in cloud logs (updated hourly) as an example of relishing "immeasurable phenomena." Another chapter contains "event maps" shaped around a wandering line that conveys "the aura of the day and place." This is an enchanting resource that will appeal to veteran journal keepers and beginners as well.