TRAVEL STORIES


The travel stories in The Very Rich Hours have been revised, and are free to read on this site, with the kind permission of Beacon Press:

Field Notes from Belize

South of the Ultima Thule (Orkney)

The Very Rich Hours (the Everglades)

Following Hermes (Greece)

The Very Rich Hours
Travels in Orkney, Belize, the Everglades & Greece
Emily Hiestand

(Beacon Press, 1992, editor: Deanne Urmy)

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"One of the five best travel books of the year."
— San Francisco Examiner full review

The most exciting travel writing I have read in years."
— Robert Finch, author of The Primal Place, The Outer Beach, and The Iambics of Newfoundland full review

In this adventurous exploration of nature and culture, the author swims around the second largest living thing on the planet, crosses the North Sea to the Orkney Islands, seeks the Maya in Belize, and navigates a houseboat through the Everglades.” — Beacon Press


Travel writing is a demanding genre. At its best, it is an exquisite mix of the personal, the philosophical and the factual — artfully propelled by vivid description. That's not an easy balance to achieve. But Emily Hiestand gets it just right.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, full review

"A tour de force of personal narrative astonishingly fluid and keenly observant."
— The Boston Globe, full review

If one must travel, one should do it with the eyes of a child, the mind of an ecologist, and the words of a poet. Astonishingly, Emily Hiestand has all of that.
— Kirkpatrick Sale, author, The Conquest of Paradise

"The prose shimmers with grace and wit as it charges the large questions with luminous details."
— Bonnie Costello, Professor of Literature; author of Imaginary Possession

These essays are just what I love, crossing over genres; travel, culture, science, nature, memoir, literature, history, all talking to each other. Most enjoyable!
— Mary Ann Kowalski, educator and musician

Collected Reviews

 
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