LiteraryTraveler.net

Spring has sprung, and with it, my wanderlust has returned.  Not satisfied with the budding beauty of the Cambridge spring, I have begun to look abroad for inspiration.  Itching for summer, I wonder what the air feels like in Greece, Turkey, or Morocco.  I realize I’m impatient, but all the subtle greenery makes me crave is the heat of summer and the rush of hot air.

There is something about natural beauty that seems to always ask for more – more heat, more greatness, more overpowering beauty.  The Romantics wrote of the sublime – the overwhelming appreciation of a natural phenomenon, tinged with awe and fear.  This is the experience many of us seek through travel, although we do not always find something so humbling.

Our newest feature article, by freelance writer Vanessa H. Larson, takes us to Cirali, a small town in Mediterranean Turkey.   Larson is seeking the Chimera, a self-replenishing burning rock that has spawned many myths and inspired countless writers.  However, Larson is interested in one novelist in particular: Nazli Eray.  In 1983, Eray published Orpheus, a surrealistic retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Larson walks through the August night to rock formation, searching for a place to locate Eray, and in the process, she rediscovers her own sense of awe and wonderment.

I, too, have recently found myself staring at rocks, looking for answers.  Just last weekend I visited Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, Massachusetts, for the first time.  Reading about the Chimera, I am reminded of this incredible natural formation – the violent, rocky gash that opens out of the earth.  While I can’t offer forth any great epiphany, I can say this: whether you are able to travel far, or only have the time for a local jaunt, there is always the opportunity to be wowed by nature.

Join us this week in celebrating the intersections between mythology and landscape (and wishing for summer’s heat) by reading The Chimera, A Mystical Journey of Nazli Eray’s Orpheus.

It seems that March is monastery month here at Literary Traveler.  With the weather starting to warm ever so slightly, there is a breath of spring in the air, which has always felt more like renewal to me than any January 1^st resolution.

But with renewal also comes return, and that is exactly what William Caverlee does in our newest feature article.  Caverlee writes about a trip he took almost thirty years ago to the Gethsemani Trappist monastery near the aptly named Bardstown, Kentucky.  He samples life at the monastery, and finds himself a little closer to understanding the works of Thomas Merton.

Merton spent much of his life traveling, searching for a place that felt right.  On December 13^th, 1941, Merton was accepted into the monastery as a postulant.  It is here that Merton wrote his autobiography at the age of 31.  The Seven Storey Mountain went on to become one of the most important Christian books of the century, a fact that Caverlee does not dwell upon.  The strongest memory Caverlee imparts centers around the friendly monks and the incongruousness of an old-world institution dropped into modern America.  Yet this is the beauty of our unique culture: the comfortable mixture of old traditions, kept alive by the faithful, and the seductive pull of technology and progress.

Join us in marveling at the wonderful strangeness of the American landscape and reveling in the continual process of return and renewal by checking out Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain at the Abbey of Gethsemani.