By autumn in the Mediterranean, the day’s heat has finally slipped from the stones, yet the light still pours over the hills in slow amber sheets. An old man stoops beneath an olive tree, silver leaves flickering around his hands. A woman settles a basket of figs against a crumbling wall of pale rock. Far off, a bell drifts through the air without urgency, answered only by swallows crossing the dusk. In moments like these, the ancient world does not feel preserved so much as uninterrupted, lingering quietly in the gestures of the living.
Continue reading Of First Fruits and Late Summers: The Long Memory of the Mediterranean Harvest