grandmother's house descriptive essay

Essay on A Visit to My Grandmother’s House

Every summer vacation, my parents and I go to visit my grandmother. This time too we went to stay with her for a week.

My grandmother stays in a small town near Berlin.

Her house is very beautiful and it is located in the middle of the town. The house has four bedrooms and a huge kitchen. This time when we went to meet her, I found her lovely garden full of beautiful flowers.

She was very happy to see us. We stayed with her for a week, and each day she cooked something special for us. She also baked my favorite chocolate cookies.

The weather there was very pleasant. So one day we all went for a picnic to the lakeside.

At night I slept in my grandmother’s room, and she told me lovely stories. She not only showed me my father’s pictures when he was young but also narrated many funny incidents about my father and his friends.

She gifted me two pullovers which she had knitted herself.

I always feel happy to be with her. I wish I could stay with her for a little longer. I left her house with a heavy heart. She too felt sad about us going back. We promised to visit her soon.

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Essay on A Visit to My Grandparents House

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100 Words Essay on A Visit to My Grandparents House

Arrival at grandparents’ house.

The journey to my grandparents’ house is always filled with anticipation. As we pull up to the familiar old house, my heart leaps with joy.

Warm Welcome

Upon entering, the smell of my grandmother’s cooking fills the air. Their warm smiles and tight hugs make me feel loved and cherished.

Enjoying the Visit

Time flies as we share stories, play games, and enjoy delicious meals. I especially love my grandfather’s tales about his childhood.

Leaving is always the hardest part. As we wave goodbye, I look back, already eager for my next visit.

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250 Words Essay on A Visit to My Grandparents House

The journey.

The trip to my grandparents’ house always begins with a sense of nostalgia, a journey back in time. The city’s concrete jungle slowly gives way to open fields, the air becomes cleaner, and the noise of the city is replaced by the chirping of birds. It’s a transition from the fast-paced, technology-driven life to a simpler, more peaceful existence.

The Arrival

On arrival, the old wooden gate creaks open, revealing the familiar rustic charm of the house. The structure, though old, stands tall, representing years of love and memories. The garden, my grandfather’s pride, is a riot of colors, with flowers blooming in every corner.

The Warm Embrace

My grandparents, despite their age, always greet us with an energetic welcome. Their faces light up with a warmth that fills the room. Their stories, filled with wisdom and humor, are the highlight of our visit. The tales of their youth, the struggles and triumphs, are lessons in resilience and perseverance.

The Farewell

Leaving is always the hardest part. The house, once buzzing with activity, seems to sigh in the quiet. As we pack our bags, we carry with us not just souvenirs but also the wisdom and values imparted. The visit to my grandparents’ house is not just a break from routine, but a journey of self-discovery and connection with my roots.

In conclusion, the trip to my grandparents’ house is a cherished experience. It’s a reminder of the importance of family, tradition, and the simple joys of life. It’s a journey that, no matter how often undertaken, always feels new.

500 Words Essay on A Visit to My Grandparents House

Introduction.

Visiting my grandparents’ house is always an enriching experience, filled with warmth, wisdom, and a sense of timeless tranquility. Nestled in the countryside, their abode is a haven away from the hustle and bustle of city life, a place where the clock seems to slow down and life takes on a different rhythm.

Stepping Back in Time

Arriving at my grandparents’ house is like stepping into a time capsule. The house, a charming old cottage, is adorned with relics from the past, each telling its own story. Antique furniture, black and white photographs, and vintage decor pieces transport me to a bygone era, offering a glimpse into the life and times of my ancestors.

The Garden of Eden

Their backyard is a sprawling garden, a veritable Eden, teeming with fruit trees, blooming flowers, and buzzing bees. The garden is a testament to my grandparents’ love for nature and their dedication to nurturing life. It’s here that I’ve learned some of my most invaluable lessons about patience and the rewards of hard work.

The Kitchen of Memories

The kitchen, the heart of the house, is where my grandmother weaves magic with her culinary skills. The aroma of home-cooked meals, the clatter of utensils, and the warmth of the old wood-fired stove, all contribute to a sense of comfort and nostalgia. It’s here that I’ve learned that food is not just about sustenance, but also about love, tradition, and community.

Wisdom in Stories

Evenings are reserved for storytelling sessions with my grandfather. His tales, filled with wisdom and humor, are a window to the world beyond textbooks. They’ve taught me about the resilience of the human spirit, the importance of kindness, and the value of humility. These stories, told in the soft glow of the setting sun, have shaped my worldview and left an indelible mark on my character.

A visit to my grandparents’ house is more than just a break from routine. It’s a journey into the past, a communion with nature, a culinary adventure, and a treasure trove of wisdom. The memories I’ve made and the lessons I’ve learned there are invaluable. They’ve enriched my life and broadened my perspective, reminding me of the simple joys of life and the timeless wisdom of the older generation.

In the end, my grandparents’ house is not just a physical structure; it’s a living, breathing entity, filled with stories, wisdom, and love. It’s a place where I’ve grown, learned, and evolved. It’s a place I call home.

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"The house of my Grandmothers" - descriptive essay about growing up in w.v.

annie1957 1 / -   Feb 26, 2010   #1 What wonderful feeling of joy and peace waking up in my Grandparent's very large home, that grew small as I grew big. The humble yellow house that my grandfather built has a tall chimney as white as the mountain tops and sits on top of one of the highest majestic Blue Ridge Mountain in the state of West Virginia. From the squeaky front porch swing you can see the Blue Mountains touching the bright blue sky. Looking to the left you can see where we would play King of The Mountain on the dew covered hill after sunset, of course I being the smallest never won!! Knowing if I lay in bed long enough I would soon hear my grandmother's heavy feet rushing down the hall opening the back porch door. The door made a squeal almost a wine then a slam! I was sure the door was responsible for waking me up every morning in that house. Her feet would almost stomp as she rushed back to the kitchen with apples from the freezer for the perfect breakfast. Soon I would hear my aunts and uncles laughing, teasing and enjoying the company of one another. Although loud voices they sent a message of peace and love. My Dad, a man of few words would always say "Mother" he always called her "no one makes a biscuit like you." Normally as I child I would launch myself from my bed but not there. I wanted to bask in that atmosphere as long as possible. The family history around the house is everywhere you look. Not to far from the front of the house you can see the hollow where my great-grandfather walked his family from Virginia and bought the property. The great aunts said "Granny never came out of that holler" they never call it a hollow in West Virginia. The aunts seemed to hate the holler. Great Granny and my Great Grandfather lived down there for years and raised 11 children down in the bottom of that holler with no electricity or water that is probably the reason. Yes the times were different I was blessed to enjoy the fruits of my ancestors labor. I only saw the beauty in the mountains the laughter of playing by the ponds and chasing the cows and the memory of my Papaw pulling us up out of the holler with his tractor. To him we were more precocious than any cargo he had pulled and we knew it from the smile on his face and the look of love in his eyes as he laughed at us all the way up the bumpy road on the mountain. On the other side of the house with the squeaky door you can see where my other great grandfather lived and my dad as a boy. If I close my eyes I can see my dad as a young boy in his denim overalls helping tote water or work in the garden. Dad one of the wisest men I know even if he had to quit school in the 8th grade to help his mother and family survive. My grandfather had to go to war leaving them with no electricity or running water. As I stretch and turn over on that hard floor, the kids always had to sleep on the floor. We never minded, for some reason that hard floor was the best place in the world to sleep. Soon the smell of homemade biscuits, apple butter, and fried apples would be calling. Not to mention my grandparents and aunts and uncles whom always ready to hug you and tell us how funny, cute, talented you were. No matter what to them we were future doctors, preachers or maybe president. I was the favorite, but we all thought we were. I was blessed with years of waking to that squeaky door slamming and the sound of my Grandmothers feet rushing back to the kitchen. Ruby Louise, my grandmother was a very small woman stronger than any woman I have ever known. In fact for years she was a midwife. If you know anyone born in Fayette County she probably met them before you. In her strength and determination she taught herself to read and went on to become a nurse. Another family lives in the house now and when I drive by I wonder if that door still squeaks. I still visit the house in my thoughts and hear that noisy door. I miss those times dearly and know that soon my aunts and uncles will be a memory like the squeaky door. I will forever be thankful for the squeaky door and the unconditional love behind it.

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When thinking of typical grandmother’s house, the first image that comes through person’s mind is probably a cozy comfortable house placed among beautiful natural surroundings, with sunny garden and birds singing all the year round. You may either believe me or not but I was lucky to live in such a house during the years of my happy childhood. My granny owned a grand building which left an indelible impression in my soul. In my narrative I want to recall the most touching moments of my life in that ‘house of wonders’.

It’s common knowledge that the place of our birth and childhood leaves the strongest impressions in our souls. Later it is always nostalgic to recall dear places, where we used to explore the world around during our early years of life. When we recall the place of our childhood, we may feel the very scent of the surroundings. Places where we used to spend good lot of our time make us feel especially nostalgic. And we are often eager to return to those places. When we do return, everything seems to be touchy and cute.

As for my personal experience, I’d like to begin with I’d like to say that I spent my childhood in Florida in my grandmother’s house. I spent there too much time not to remember it in details. As I’ve already mentioned, return to native place always arouses certain feeling of happiness or so. As for me I seem to be lucky that I spent my childhood in the country house of my dear granny. In the course of time visiting old relatives became an excellent chance to turn the time round and to become child once more. Every time I was at my granny she couldn’t help taking care of me. May be that’s why I love to visit her so much. Countryside is actually the nicest place for everybody to have really unforgettable rest. Fresh air always cheers you up and little noise helps to relax to full extent. The years of my staying in granny’s country house in Florida remained the most remarkable years in my life. I remember sand beach, which now became so popular among tourists. I was always fascinated by vast and mysterious sea. I used to walk in the forest which seemed to be full of adventures. Frankly speaking I did millions of things all children usually do in the countryside, but my staying there remained something special and dear for me personally. This impression is completed by the image of my old granny, which is a kind and cute woman, always affable and helpful. All her life she worked hard and now she is still very industrious and tender-hearted. All best moments in my life belong to my granny’s place at Florida. I consider myself to be lucky in this way, because nowadays it became the most visited resort for tourists in the USA. Florida. People tend to come here in any season, because it’s always warm and pleasant. Conditions are ideal in any way. The temperature is always stable and in my early age I was able to bathe all the year round. As I lived in the west peninsula of Florida, Mexican gulf water was especially suitable for bathing. It was warm and pleasant. Apart from this Mexican gulf is less salty in comparison with ocean waters. The water here never hurts eyes or skin. I remember how hot it was in summer when the temperature was about 35 degrees. Bathing however didn’t protect from the heat, as the water itself was 30 degrees. However I don’t really remember whether I suffered much, cause I used to spend the whole days long in the garden or in woods. Speaking about my grandma’s country house I can’t help mentioning that for some reason pensioners tend to buy houses in Florida, cause it is an ideal place for calm and tranquil life. Perfect climate attracts hundreds of people. May be just because of this I felt so satisfied and comfortable there. I don’t remember a moment of unhappiness staying there. However speaking about it, I can’t help mentioning that natural catastrophes often occur in the USA. Unfortunately it especially concerns the state of Florida. In comparison with other states, Florida was more often attacked by various hurricanes, storms, tornados and watersprouts. During my years of childhood, I experienced it on my own. I remember being amazed by this. I always knew much about different storms and tornados, cause I saw them with my own eyes.

There are people who like to move from one place to another, to live in towns, villages or country sides. My grandmother however keeps to another mode of life. During the whole life she used to stay in one place among peaceful hills, mountains, fields, rivers and streams. She has always preferred tranquil life instead of busy world of streets, city traffic, buildings and constant crowds. May be due to this she was never depressed. She was always satisfied with the place where she lived, even though she was deprived of certain modern conveniences. May be due to this I’m never feeling uncomfortable when I return there. There is always warm and friendly atmosphere. The house itself looked impressive, as it was big and old. The ivy was creeping from its red-brick walls. On the whole it seemed to be done in old-fashioned style with its big half-round windows. The surroundings amazed with numerous green trees everywhere. It created an impression of being somewhere in the park or even in the wood. Due to this I often felt a sort of lonely to some extent. It always seemed that trees hid some part of the world from me. Sometimes I felt like being in the jungles. In such moments I deepened into my inner world. In this way such surroundings gave me an opportunity to think over numerous things. Everything seemed to be so friendly that I couldn’t help just admiring it. I consider native house to be the most attractive destination in my life. Warm and gentle climate and the beauty of scenery made me fall in love with those places. I remember there being several lakes, stretching in miles of coastlines. My grandma often took me there to see the beauty of clear waters. Besides I find it outstanding that I could eat grapefruit and oranges right from the trees. It may sound odd but I do miss those happy days.

The house was not so luxurious, but there was something cute in it. From the first sight it was a usual one. There were two vast rooms with wide windows and old-styled furniture. I always felt sort of shy at the sight of those grand apartments. There also was an attic, which seemed to be just as it must be in such old houses. It was full of old things all in dust and disorder. Actually I don’t remember much from my staying there. But one of the strongest impressions was that attic. I was so attracted by the mystery of it that often spends time there trying to reveal its secrets. It’s quite ordinary children’s activity. There was always possible to find something to do. I can’t remember being bored or tired either. I always managed to entertain myself. My granny owned a vast territory of land, so I could always find attractive places to explore. Another impressive thing is federal highway Turn Pike. Actually there are not so many things which can really impress, but as a child, I admired those deserted surroundings. There were great relict swamps which later became national reserves. I dare say there is much to admire. As I spent much time there I can’t help recalling it with cute but painful feeling of nostalgia. These were happy days of my life. But every time I return to those native places, I regret I can’t really return to the past. There is no one living there now. And the house itself changed much from the times of my childhood. But the feeling of tranquility remained. Sometimes I see that narrow path leading to my grandma’s house. Though now it may have been completely hidden with grass. Life changes and we change together with it. But the only thing that remains the same is our feelings. I will always bare in heart the sense of security that I used to feel in my granny’s house.

Time of people’s childhood influences the personality most of all. My life in grandma’s house until the age of 6 made great impact on me. As I used to live in natural surroundings, apart from the city noise, I learned to feel close to nature. Everything in the house was filled with grandeur and I still respect it. And my granny was like a mistress of all those wonders which I’ve met there. I remember even there being a big dog. I don’t know exactly whether it really was big or just I was too little, but for me that dog remained a guard of the house in the first place. So that was actually how we lived. There were three of us: my granny, the dog and me. We used to spend evenings together in front of a big old fireplace. It hardly remained there now, but at that time we sat there, my granny telling me fairy-tales or real stories from life. But I didn’t see much difference cause I was no more than a child. My granny was a talented story-teller and I liked it, but it is a bit painful for me to recall it now. The more I try to remember those times, the more painful it is to continue the narration. Another vivid memory is portraits our ‘ancestors’ looking from large paintings on the walls in the hall. The matter is that the house was not quite usual. It was too old and ancient traditions still remained there. It hard to believe but still…

To know the personality of a person, psychologists make him recall for the earliest memories in his life. If you’d ask me, these would be my first days in the granny’s house, when everything seemed to be sort of enigmatic for a little child like me. I dare say I tried to explore it as deep as possible.

The very atmosphere of the house and its surroundings made me feel calm and relaxed. Sometimes it seemed that time had stopped for a moment for me to admire that world. As I moved from there when I was just 6 years old, I don’t remember much, but I do remember my feelings. The most touching recalling is may be autumn in my granny’s house. I remember it being neither warm nor cold. It just made me feel lonely a bit. I remember me walking among those numerous grand trees and admire colored leaves on the trees and on the ground. I miss that feeling of calmness and stability of the world around. I wish I could return the reality of those feelings once more. But I’ve nothing else to do rather than to keep those memories in mind and never forget about happiness of staying in my grandmother’s house. Even though I didn’t last long, I would never forget it.

References:

1. Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau ‘Tampa Florida attractions and activities’ ― 2007 http://www.visittampabay.com/ 2. Robertson ‘Tampa Guide’ ― 2006 http://www.tampaguide.com/

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Mcconnell mansion museum, mcconnell house.

• Location: Moscow Idaho Regional Essays: Idaho Latah County Architect: William McConnell Types: single-family dwellings boardinghouses historic house museums (buildings) bay windows brackets (structural elements) Styles: Italianate (North American architecture styles) Eastlake Materials: clapboard siding millwork aluminum (metal)

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Wendy R. McClure, " McConnell Mansion Museum ", [ Moscow , Idaho ], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/ID-01-057-0001-01 . Last accessed: April 6, 2024.

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In 1886, entrepreneur William E. McConnell began building a two-story house, sunken garden, small carriage house, and barn for his family on an entire block in the Fort Russell neighborhood. Like other early Fort Russell residents, McConnell sited the house on the block’s most prominent corner, the intersection of Second and Adams streets, to showcase its eyecatching design and position his family at the center of Moscow’s social life.

The house reflects an eclectic blend of Victorian-era architectural styles including Eastlake, Italianate, and Gothic Revival. Rather than engage an architect, McConnell likely used plans from a pattern book and worked with a carpenter to integrate elements and detailing from the three styles. The resulting cohesive design made a unique statement in the fledgling city.

On the exterior, characteristically vertical proportions are expressed in several ways. Three two-story bays capped with slender gable roofs define its signature massing; windows and doors on each facade are correspondingly tall and narrow. As viewed from intersecting sidewalks and streets, verticality is further amplified by the site itself, which slopes steeply upward toward the house. Exterior ornamentation is extensive: decorative brackets support window bays and roof overhangs, and gable ends feature highly articulated wood ornamentation. Although the original clapboard siding has been replaced with metal siding, gable ends continue to display cedar shingles with sawtooth imbrication.

Both the spatial organization and interior detailing reflect a combination of Victorian-era influences. The original ground-floor plan featured front and rear parlors separated by wood sliding doors, a dining room, kitchen, pantry, and servant’s quarters. Four bedrooms and children’s playrooms were housed on the second floor. High ceiling heights prevail throughout the house. Windows feature interior wooden shutters (made in San Francisco) that serve to further accent vertical proportions in each room.

Consistent with the later Victorian era, appearance rather than quality weighed heavily McConnell’s decisions regarding finishes. Interior detailing was largely crafted from Moscow’s limited pallet of available materials. Locally prevalent fir and pine were used for interior millwork and flooring; the inexpensive wood was then painted with graining to create the appearance of more costly hardwoods. Similarly, the steel-backed fireplace in the back parlor was embellished with a thin veneer of Vermont marble bordered by gold leaf and black onyx trim.

The family fell into financial hard times following McConnell’s two-term governorship and the financial panic of 1893, during which he was forced to declare bankruptcy and close his downtown department store. To avoid losing the property, McConnell’s wife declared it an official homestead. The bank took ownership of the house in 1897 and it remained vacant until 1901, when it was purchased by William Adair, one of the community’s first physicians. Since the house was larger than his family required, Adair rented rooms to local entrepreneurs and university faculty. Frederic Church, a European history professor who, at one time, rented a room in the house, later purchased the building as his own single-family residence. The barn was sold and converted to a single-family residence in 1926. Church bequeathed the house to the Latah County Historical Society upon his death in 1966.

Since 1968 the house has served as both headquarters and museum for the Latah County Historical Society (LCHS). It provides one of the best remaining examples of Italianate and Eastlake architecture in the state of Idaho. Though compromised by some unfortunate decisions surrounding its ongoing maintenance, such as use of metal replacement siding, the McConnell House continues to communicate a significant architectural presence while serving in its adapted role as a museum.

Doyon, Annie, and Kathryn Burke-Hise, “Fort Russell Neighborhood Historic District,” Latah County, Idaho. National Register of Historic Places District Boundary Increase and Additional Documentation, 2015. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington D.C.

Monroe, J. Moscow: Living and Learning on the Palouse . Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2003.

Otness, L. A Great Good Country: A Guide to Historic Moscow and Latah County, Idaho . Moscow, ID: Local History Paper # 8, Latah County Historical Society, 1983.

Renk, Nancy. “W.E. McConnell House,” Latah County, Idaho. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1974. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington D.C.

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• Location: Moscow, Idaho Regional Overviews: Latah County Architect: William McConnell Types: single-family dwellings boardinghouses historic house museums (buildings) bay windows brackets (structural elements) Styles: Italianate (North American architecture styles) Eastlake Materials: clapboard siding millwork aluminum (metal)

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Home Numéros 59 1 - Tisser les liens : voyager, e... 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teac...

36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau

L'auteur américain Henry David Thoreau est un écrivain du voyage qui a rarement quitté sa ville natale de Concorde, Massachusetts, où il a vécu de 1817 à 1862. Son approche du "voyage" consiste à accorder une profonde attention à son environnement ordinaire et à voir le monde à partir de perspectives multiples, comme il l'explique avec subtilité dans Walden (1854). Inspiré par Thoreau et par la célèbre série de gravures du peintre d'estampes japonais Katsushika Hokusai, intitulée 36 vues du Mt. Fuji (1830-32), j'ai fait un cours sur "L'écriture thoreauvienne du voyage" à l'Université de l'Idaho, que j'appelle 36 vues des montagnes de Moscow: ou, Faire un grand voyage — l'esprit et le carnet ouvert — dans un petit lieu . Cet article explore la philosophie et les stratégies pédagogiques de ce cours, qui tente de partager avec les étudiants les vertus d'un regard neuf sur le monde, avec les yeux vraiment ouverts, avec le regard d'un voyageur, en "faisant un grand voyage" à Moscow, Idaho. Les étudiants affinent aussi leurs compétences d'écriture et apprennent les traditions littéraires et artistiques associées au voyage et au sens du lieu.

Index terms

Keywords: , designing a writing class to foster engagement.

1 The signs at the edge of town say, "Entering Moscow, Idaho. Population 25,060." This is a small hamlet in the midst of a sea of rolling hills, where farmers grow varieties of wheat, lentils, peas, and garbanzo beans, irrigated by natural rainfall. Although the town of Moscow has a somewhat cosmopolitan feel because of the presence of the University of Idaho (with its 13,000 students and a few thousand faculty and staff members), elegant restaurants, several bookstores and music stores, and a patchwork of artsy coffee shops on Main Street, the entire mini-metropolis has only about a dozen traffic lights and a single high school. As a professor of creative writing and the environmental humanities at the university, I have long been interested in finding ways to give special focuses to my writing and literature classes that will help my students think about the circumstances of their own lives and find not only academic meaning but personal significance in our subjects. I have recently taught graduate writing workshops on such themes as "The Body" and "Crisis," but when I was given the opportunity recently to teach an undergraduate writing class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, I decided to choose a focus that would bring me—and my students—back to one of the writers who has long been of central interest to me: Henry David Thoreau.

2 One of the courses I have routinely taught during the past six years is Environmental Writing, an undergraduate class that I offer as part of the university's Semester in the Wild Program, a unique undergraduate opportunity that sends a small group of students to study five courses (Ecology, Environmental History, Environmental Writing, Outdoor Leadership and Wilderness Survival, and Wilderness Management and Policy) at a remote research station located in the middle of the largest wilderness area (the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness) in the United States south of Alaska. In "Teaching with Wolves," a recent article about the Semester in the Wild Program, I explained that my goal in the Environmental Writing class is to help the students "synthesize their experience in the wilderness with the content of the various classes" and "to think ahead to their professional lives and their lives as engaged citizens, for which critical thinking and communication skills are so important" (325). A foundational text for the Environmental Writing class is a selection from Thoreau's personal journal, specifically the entries he made October 1-20, 1853, which I collected in the 1993 writing textbook Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers . I ask the students in the Semester in the Wild Program to deeply immerse themselves in Thoreau's precise and colorful descriptions of the physical world that is immediately present to him and, in turn, to engage with their immediate encounters with the world in their wilderness location. Thoreau's entries read like this:

Oct. 4. The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing. The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost. Bumblebees are on the Aster undulates , and gnats are dancing in the air. Oct. 5. The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds extremely like a loon on the pond. How fit! Oct. 6 and 7. Windy. Elms bare. (372)

3 In thinking ahead to my class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, which would be offered on the main campus of the University of Idaho in the fall semester of 2018, I wanted to find a topic that would instill in my students the Thoreauvian spirit of visceral engagement with the world, engagement on the physical, emotional, and philosophical levels, while still allowing my students to remain in the city and live their regular lives as students. It occurred to me that part of what makes Thoreau's journal, which he maintained almost daily from 1837 (when he was twenty years old) to 1861 (just a year before his death), such a rich and elegant work is his sense of being a traveler, even when not traveling geographically.

Traveling a Good Deal in Moscow

I have traveled a good deal in Concord…. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; 4)

4 For Thoreau, one did not need to travel a substantial physical distance in order to be a traveler, in order to bring a traveler's frame of mind to daily experience. His most famous book, Walden , is well known as an account of the author's ideas and daily experiments in simple living during the two years, two months, and two days (July 4, 1845, to September 6, 1847) he spent inhabiting a simple wooden house that he built on the shore of Walden Pond, a small lake to the west of Boston, Massachusetts. Walden Pond is not a remote location—it is not out in the wilderness. It is on the edge of a small village, much like Moscow, Idaho. The concept of "traveling a good deal in Concord" is a kind of philosophical and psychological riddle. What does it mean to travel extensively in such a small place? The answer to this question is meaningful not only to teachers hoping to design writing classes in the spirit of Thoreau but to all who are interested in travel as an experience and in the literary genre of travel writing.

5 Much of Walden is an exercise in deftly establishing a playful and intellectually challenging system of synonyms, an array of words—"economy," "deliberateness," "simplicity," "dawn," "awakening," "higher laws," etc.—that all add up to powerful probing of what it means to live a mindful and attentive life in the world. "Travel" serves as a key, if subtle, metaphor for the mindful life—it is a metaphor and also, in a sense, a clue: if we can achieve the traveler's perspective without going far afield, then we might accomplish a kind of enlightenment. Thoreau's interest in mindfulness becomes clear in chapter two of Walden , "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," in which he writes, "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" The latter question implies the author's feeling that he is himself merely evolving as an awakened individual, not yet fully awake, or mindful, in his efforts to live "a poetic or divine life" (90). Thoreau proceeds to assert that "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" (90). Just what this endeavor might be is not immediately spelled out in the text, but the author does quickly point out the value of focusing on only a few activities or ideas at a time, so as not to let our lives be "frittered away by detail." He writes: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; … and keep your accounts on your thumb nail" (91). The strong emphasis in the crucial second chapter of Walden is on the importance of waking up and living deliberately through a conscious effort to engage in particular activities that support such awakening. It occurs to me that "travel," or simply making one's way through town with the mindset of a traveler, could be one of these activities.

6 It is in the final chapter of the book, titled "Conclusion," that Thoreau makes clear the relationship between travel and living an attentive life. He begins the chapter by cataloguing the various physical locales throughout North America or around the world to which one might travel—Canada, Ohio, Colorado, and even Tierra del Fuego. But Thoreau states: "Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after." What comes next is brief quotation from the seventeenth-century English poet William Habbington (but presented anonymously in Thoreau's text), which might be one of the most significant passages in the entire book:

Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography. (320)

7 This admonition to travel the mysterious territory of one's own mind and master the strange cosmos of the self is actually a challenge to the reader—and probably to the author himself—to focus on self-reflection and small-scale, local movement as if such activities were akin to exploration on a grand, planetary scale. What is really at issue here is not the physical distance of one's journey, but the mental flexibility of one's approach to the world, one's ability to look at the world with a fresh, estranged point of view. Soon after his discussion of the virtues of interior travel, Thoreau explains why he left his simple home at Walden Pond after a few years of experimental living there, writing, "It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves" (323). In other words, no matter what we're doing in life, we can fall into a "beaten track" if we're not careful, thus failing to stay "awake."

8 As I thought about my writing class at the University of Idaho, I wondered how I might design a series of readings and writing exercises for university students that would somehow emulate the Thoreauvian objective of achieving ultra-mindfulness in a local environment. One of the greatest challenges in designing such a class is the fact that it took Thoreau himself many years to develop an attentiveness to his environment and his own emotional rhythms and an efficiency of expression that would enable him to describe such travel-without-travel, and I would have only sixteen weeks to achieve this with my own students. The first task, I decided, was to invite my students into the essential philosophical stance of the class, and I did this by asking my students to read the opening chapter of Walden ("Economy") in which he talks about traveling "a good deal" in his small New England village as well as the second chapter and the conclusion, which reveal the author's enthusiasm (some might even say obsession ) for trying to achieve an awakened condition and which, in the end, suggest that waking up to the meaning of one's life in the world might be best accomplished by attempting the paradoxical feat of becoming "expert in home-cosmography." As I stated it among the objectives for my course titled 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Or, Traveling a Good Deal—with Open Minds and Notebooks—in a Small Place , one of our goals together (along with practicing nonfiction writing skills and learning about the genre of travel writing) would be to "Cultivate a ‘Thoreauvian' way of appreciating the subtleties of the ordinary world."

Windy. Elms Bare.

9 For me, the elegance and heightened sensitivity of Thoreau's engagement with place is most movingly exemplified in his journal, especially in the 1850s after he's mastered the art of observation and nuanced, efficient description of specific natural phenomena and environmental conditions. His early entries in the journal are abstract mini-essays on such topics as truth, beauty, and "The Poet," but over time the journal notations become so immersed in the direct experience of the more-than-human world, in daily sensory experiences, that the pronoun "I" even drops out of many of these records. Lawrence Buell aptly describes this Thoreauvian mode of expression as "self-relinquishment" (156) in his 1995 book The Environmental Imagination , suggesting such writing "question[s] the authority of the superintending consciousness. As such, it opens up the prospect of a thoroughgoing perceptual breakthrough, suggesting the possibility of a more ecocentric state of being than most of us have dreamed of" (144-45). By the time Thoreau wrote "Windy. Elms bare" (372) as his single entry for October 6 and 7, 1853, he had entered what we might call an "ecocentric zone of consciousness" in his work, attaining the ability to channel his complex perceptions of season change (including meteorology and botany and even his own emotional state) into brief, evocative prose.

10 I certainly do not expect my students to be able to do such writing after only a brief introduction to the course and to Thoreau's own methods of journal writing, but after laying the foundation of the Thoreauvian philosophy of nearby travel and explaining to my students what I call the "building blocks of the personal essay" (description, narration, and exposition), I ask them to engage in a preliminary journal-writing exercise that involves preparing five journal entries, each "a paragraph or two in length," that offer detailed physical descriptions of ordinary phenomena from their lives (plants, birds, buildings, street signs, people, food, etc.), emphasizing shape, color, movement or change, shadow, and sometimes sound, smell, taste, and/or touch. The goal of the journal entries, I tell the students, is to begin to get them thinking about close observation, vivid descriptive language, and the potential to give their later essays in the class an effective texture by balancing more abstract information and ideas with evocative descriptive passages and storytelling.

11 I am currently teaching this class, and I am writing this article in early September, as we are entering the fourth week of the semester. The students have just completed the journal-writing exercise and are now preparing to write the first of five brief essays on different aspects of Moscow that will eventually be braided together, as discrete sections of the longer piece, into a full-scale literary essay about Moscow, Idaho, from the perspective of a traveler. For the journal exercise, my students wrote some rather remarkable descriptive statements, which I think bodes well for their upcoming work. One student, Elizabeth Isakson, wrote stunning journal descriptions of a cup of coffee, her own feet, a lemon, a basil leaf, and a patch of grass. For instance, she wrote:

Steaming hot liquid poured into a mug. No cream, just black. Yet it appears the same brown as excretion. The texture tells another story with meniscus that fades from clear to gold and again brown. The smell is intoxicating for those who are addicted. Sweetness fills the nostrils; bitterness rushes over the tongue. The contrast somehow complements itself. Earthy undertones flower up, yet this beverage is much more satisfying than dirt. When the mug runs dry, specks of dark grounds remain swimming in the sunken meniscus. Steam no longer rises because energy has found a new home.

12 For the grassy lawn, she wrote:

Calico with shades of green, the grass is yellowing. Once vibrant, it's now speckled with straw. Sticking out are tall, seeding dandelions. Still some dips in the ground have maintained thick, soft patches of green. The light dances along falling down from the trees above, creating a stained-glass appearance made from various green shades. The individual blades are stiff enough to stand erect, but they will yield to even slight forces of wind or pressure. Made from several long strands seemingly fused together, some blades fray at the end, appearing brittle. But they do not simply break off; they hold fast to the blade to which they belong.

13 The point of this journal writing is for the students to look closely enough at ordinary reality to feel estranged from it, as if they have never before encountered (or attempted to describe) a cup of coffee or a field of grass—or a lemon or a basil leaf or their own body. Thus, the Thoreauvian objective of practicing home-cosmography begins to take shape. The familiar becomes exotic, note-worthy, and strangely beautiful, just as it often does for the geographical travel writer, whose adventures occur far away from where she or he normally lives. Travel, in a sense, is an antidote to complacency, to over-familiarity. But the premise of my class in Thoreauvian travel writing is that a slight shift of perspective can overcome the complacency we might naturally feel in our home surroundings. To accomplish this we need a certain degree of disorientation. This is the next challenge for our class.

The Blessing of Being Lost

14 Most of us take great pains to "get oriented" and "know where we're going," whether this is while running our daily errands or when thinking about the essential trajectories of our lives. We're often instructed by anxious parents to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, if only for the sake of basic safety. But the traveler operates according to a somewhat different set of priorities, perhaps, elevating adventure and insight above basic comfort and security, at least to some degree. This certainly seems to be the case for the Thoreauvian traveler, or for Thoreau himself. In Walden , he writes:

…not until we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. (171)

15 I could explicate this passage at length, but that's not really my purpose here. I read this as a celebration of salutary disorientation, of the potential to be lost in such a way as to deepen one's ability to pay attention to oneself and one's surroundings, natural and otherwise. If travel is to a great degree an experience uniquely capable of triggering attentiveness to our own physical and psychological condition, to other cultures and the minds and needs of other people, and to a million small details of our environment that we might take for granted at home but that accrue special significance when we're away, I would argue that much of this attentiveness is owed to the sense of being lost, even the fear of being lost, that often happens when we leave our normal habitat.

16 So in my class I try to help my students "get lost" in a positive way. Here in Moscow, the major local landmark is a place called Moscow Mountain, a forested ridge of land just north of town, running approximately twenty kilometers to the east of the city. Moscow "Mountain" does not really have a single, distinctive peak like a typical mountain—it is, as I say, more of a ridge than a pinnacle. When I began contemplating this class on Thoreauvian travel writing, the central concepts I had in mind were Thoreau's notion of traveling a good deal in Concord and also the idea of looking at a specific place from many different angles. The latter idea is not only Thoreauvian, but perhaps well captured in the eighteen-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's series of woodblock prints known as 36 Views of Mt. Fuji , which offers an array of different angles on the mountain itself and on other landscape features (lakes, the sea, forests, clouds, trees, wind) and human behavior which is represented in many of the prints, often with Mt. Fuji in the distant background or off to the side. In fact, I imagine Hokusai's approach to representing Mt. Fuji as so important to the concept of this travel writing class that I call the class "36 Views of Moscow Mountain," symbolizing the multiple approaches I'll be asking my students to take in contemplating and describing not only Moscow Mountain itself, but the culture and landscape and the essential experience of Moscow the town. The idea of using Hokusai's series of prints as a focal point of this class came to me, in part, from reading American studies scholar Cathy Davidson's 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , a memoir that offers sixteen short essays about different facets of her life as a visiting professor in that island nation.

17 The first of five brief essays my students will prepare for the class is what I'm calling a "Moscow Mountain descriptive essay," building upon the small descriptive journal entries they've written recently. In this case, though, I am asking the students to describe the shapes and colors of the Moscow Mountain ridge, while also telling a brief story or two about their observations of the mountain, either by visiting the mountain itself to take a walk or a bike ride or by explaining how they glimpse portions of the darkly forested ridge in the distance while walking around the University of Idaho campus or doing things in town. In preparation for the Moscow Mountain essays, we read several essays or book chapters that emphasize "organizing principles" in writing, often the use of particular landscape features, such as trees or mountains, as a literary focal point. For instance, in David Gessner's "Soaring with Castro," from his 2007 book Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , he not only refers to La Gran Piedra (a small mountain in southeastern Cuba) as a narrative focal point, but to the osprey, or fish eagle, itself and its migratory journey as an organizing principle for his literary project (203). Likewise, in his essay "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot," Chicago author Leonard Dubkin writes about his decision, as a newly fired journalist, to climb up a tree in Chicago's Lincoln Park to observe and listen to the birds that gather in the green branches in the evening, despite the fact that most adults would consider this a strange and inappropriate activity. We also looked at several of Hokusai's woodblock prints and analyzed these together in class, trying to determine how the mountain served as an organizing principle for each print or whether there were other key features of the prints—clouds, ocean waves, hats and pieces of paper floating in the wind, humans bent over in labor—that dominate the images, with Fuji looking on in the distance.

18 I asked my students to think of Hokusai's representations of Mt. Fuji as aesthetic models, or metaphors, for what they might try to do in their brief (2-3 pages) literary essays about Moscow Mountain. What I soon discovered was that many of my students, even students who have spent their entire lives in Moscow, either were not aware of Moscow Mountain at all or had never actually set foot on the mountain. So we spent half an hour during one class session, walking to a vantage point on the university campus, where I could point out where the mountain is and we could discuss how one might begin to write about such a landscape feature in a literary essay. Although I had thought of the essay describing the mountain as a way of encouraging the students to think about a familiar landscape as an orienting device, I quickly learned that this will be a rather challenging exercise for many of the students, as it will force them to think about an object or a place that is easily visible during their ordinary lives, but that they typically ignore. Paying attention to the mountain, the ridge, will compel them to reorient themselves in this city and think about a background landscape feature that they've been taking for granted until now. I think of this as an act of disorientation or being lost—a process of rethinking their own presence in this town that has a nearby mountain that most of them seldom think about. I believe Thoreau would consider this a good, healthy experience, a way of being present anew in a familiar place.

36 Views—Or, When You Invert Your Head

19 Another key aspect of Hokusai's visual project and Thoreau's literary project is the idea of changing perspective. One can view Mt. Fuji from 36 different points of views, or from thousands of different perspectives, and it is never quite the same place—every perspective is original, fresh, mind-expanding. The impulse to shift perspective in pursuit of mindfulness is also ever-present in Thoreau's work, particularly in his personal journal and in Walden . This idea is particularly evident, to me, in the chapter of Walden titled "The Ponds," where he writes:

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distinct pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. (186)

20 Elsewhere in the chapter, Thoreau describes the view of the pond from the top of nearby hills and the shapes and colors of pebbles in the water when viewed from close up. He chances physical perspective again and again throughout the chapter, but it is in the act of looking upside down, actually suggesting that one might invert one's head, that he most vividly conveys the idea of looking at the world in different ways in order to be lost and awakened, just as the traveler to a distant land might feel lost and invigorated by such exposure to an unknown place.

21 After asking students to write their first essay about Moscow Mountain, I give them four additional short essays to write, each two to four pages long. We read short examples of place-based essays, some of them explicitly related to travel, and then the students work on their own essays on similar topics. The second short essay is about food—I call this the "Moscow Meal" essay. We read the final chapter of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), "The Perfect Meal," and Anthony Bourdain's chapter "Where Cooks Come From" in the book A Cook's Tour (2001) are two of the works we study in preparation for the food essay. The three remaining short essays including a "Moscow People" essay (exploring local characters are important facets of the place), a more philosophical essay about "the concept of Moscow," and a final "Moscow Encounter" essay that tells the story of a dramatic moment of interaction with a person, an animal, a memorable thing to eat or drink, a sunset, or something else. Along the way, we read the work of Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stafford, Paul Theroux, and other authors. Before each small essay is due, we spend a class session holding small-group workshops, allowing the students to discuss their essays-in-progress with each other and share portions of their manuscripts. The idea is that they will learn about writing even by talking with each other about their essays. In addition to writing about Moscow from various angles, they will learn about additional points of view by considering the angles of insight developed by their fellow students. All of this is the writerly equivalent of "inverting [their] heads."

Beneath the Smooth Skin of Place

22 Aside from Thoreau's writing and Hokusai's images, perhaps the most important writer to provide inspiration for this class is Indiana-based essayist Scott Russell Sanders. Shortly after introducing the students to Thoreau's key ideas in Walden and to the richness of his descriptive writing in the journal, I ask them to read his essay "Buckeye," which first appeared in Sanders's Writing from the Center (1995). "Buckeye" demonstrates the elegant braiding together of descriptive, narrative, and expository/reflective prose, and it also offers a strong argument about the importance of creating literature and art about place—what he refers to as "shared lore" (5)—as a way of articulating the meaning of a place and potentially saving places that would otherwise be exploited for resources, flooded behind dams, or otherwise neglected or damaged. The essay uses many of the essential literary devices, ranging from dialogue to narrative scenes, that I hope my students will practice in their own essays, while also offering a vivid argument in support of the kind of place-based writing the students are working on.

23 Another vital aspect of our work together in this class is the effort to capture the wonderful idiosyncrasies of this place, akin to the idiosyncrasies of any place that we examine closely enough to reveal its unique personality. Sanders's essay "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," which we study together in Week 9 of the course, addresses this topic poignantly. The author challenges readers to learn the "durable realities" of the places where they live, the details of "watershed, biome, habitat, food-chain, climate, topography, ecosystem and the areas defined by these natural features they call bioregions" (17). "The earth," he writes, "needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants" (16). By Week 9 of the semester, the students have written about Moscow Mountain, about local food, and about local characters, and they are ready at this point to reflect on some of the more philosophical dimensions of living in a small academic village surrounded by farmland and beyond that surrounded by the Cascade mountain range to the West and the Rockies to the East. "We need a richer vocabulary of place" (18), urges Sanders. By this point in the semester, by reading various examples of place-based writing and by practicing their own powers of observation and expression, my students will, I hope, have developed a somewhat richer vocabulary to describe their own experiences in this specific place, a place they've been trying to explore with "open minds and notebooks." Sanders argues that

if we pay attention, we begin to notice patterns in the local landscape. Perceiving those patterns, acquiring names and theories and stories for them, we cease to be tourists and become inhabitants. The bioregional consciousness I am talking about means bearing your place in mind, keeping track of its condition and needs, committing yourself to its care. (18)

24 Many of my students will spend only four or five years in Moscow, long enough to earn a degree before moving back to their hometowns or journeying out into the world in pursuit of jobs or further education. Moscow will be a waystation for some of these student writers, not a permanent home. Yet I am hoping that this semester-long experiment in Thoreauvian attentiveness and place-based writing will infect these young people with both the bioregional consciousness Sanders describes and a broader fascination with place, including the cultural (yes, the human ) dimensions of this and any other place. I feel such a mindfulness will enrich the lives of my students, whether they remain here or move to any other location on the planet or many such locations in succession.

25 Toward the end of "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," Sanders tells the story of encountering a father with two young daughters near a city park in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives. Sanders is "grazing" on wild mulberries from a neighborhood tree, and the girls are keen to join him in savoring the local fruit. But their father pulls them away, stating, "Thank you very much, but we never eat anything that grows wild. Never ever." To this Sanders responds: "If you hold by that rule, you will not get sick from eating poison berries, but neither will you be nourished from eating sweet ones. Why not learn to distinguish one from the other? Why feed belly and mind only from packages?" (19-20). By looking at Moscow Mountain—and at Moscow, Idaho, more broadly—from numerous points of view, my students, I hope, will nourish their own bellies and minds with the wild fruit and ideas of this place. I say this while chewing a tart, juicy, and, yes, slightly sweet plum that I pulled from a feral tree in my own Moscow neighborhood yesterday, an emblem of engagement, of being here.

Bibliography

BUELL, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture , Harvard University Press, 1995.

DAVIDSON, Cathy, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , Duke University Press, 2006.

DUBKIN, Leonard, "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot." Enchanted Streets: The Unlikely Adventures of an Urban Nature Lover , Little, Brown and Company, 1947, 34-42.

GESSNER, David, Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , Beacon, 2007.

ISAKSON, Elizabeth, "Journals." Assignment for 36 Views of Moscow Mountain (English 208), University of Idaho, Fall 2018.

SANDERS, Scott Russell, "Buckeye" and "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America." Writing from the Center , Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 1-8, 9-21.

SLOVIC, Scott, "Teaching with Wolves", Western American Literature 52.3 (Fall 2017): 323-31.

THOREAU, Henry David, "October 1-20, 1853", Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers , edited by Scott H. Slovic and Terrell F. Dixon, Macmillan, 1993, 371-75.

THOREAU, Henry David, Walden . 1854. Princeton University Press, 1971.

Bibliographical reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban , 59 | 2018, 41-54.

Electronic reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban [Online], 59 | 2018, Online since 01 June 2018 , connection on 06 April 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/3688; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.3688

About the author

Scott slovic.

University of Idaho Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA. The author and editor of many books and articles, he edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment from 1995 to 2020. His latest coedited book is The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication  (2019).

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• Introduction (version en français) [Full text] Introduction [Full text | translation | en] Published in Caliban , 64 | 2020
• To Collapse or Not to Collapse? A Joint Interview [Full text] Published in Caliban , 63 | 2020
• Furrowed Brows, Questioning Earth: Minding the Loess Soil of the Palouse [Full text] Published in Caliban , 61 | 2019
• Foreword: Thinking of “Earth Island” on Earth Day 2016 [Full text] Published in Caliban , 55 | 2016

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• 64 | 2020 Animal Love. Considering Animal Attachments in Anglophone Literature and Culture
• 63 | 2020 Dynamics of Collapse in Fantasy, the Fantastic and SF
• 62 | 2019 Female Suffrage in British Art, Literature and History
• 61 | 2019 Land’s Furrows and Sorrows in Anglophone Countries
• 60 | 2018 The Life of Forgetting in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century British Literature
• 59 | 2018 Anglophone Travel and Exploration Writing: Meetings Between the Human and Nonhuman
• 58 | 2017 The Mediterranean and its Hinterlands
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The History of Moscow City

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Another Israeli Hostage’s Body Recovered, the Death Angering His Family

Like the families of other hostages, they are outraged that the Israeli government has yet to reach a deal to halt the fighting and bring home loved ones held in Gaza.

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By Aaron Boxerman and Anna Betts

Reporting from Jerusalem

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had recovered the body of an Israeli hostage who was abducted during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, almost six months after he was taken hostage.

The man, identified as Elad Katzir, 47, was a farmer in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip that was one of the areas hardest hit in the attack on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 Israelis died and about 250 people were taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. His body was recovered by troops in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where the Israeli army has been operating since December, and returned to Israel overnight, the military said.

After the announcement of the recovery and return of Mr. Katzir’s body, Mr. Katzir’s sister, Carmit, bitterly denounced the Israeli government in a social media post for failing to secure her brother’s release.

“He could have been saved if there had been a deal in time,” she wrote. “But our leadership are cowards, motivated by political considerations, and thus it did not happen.

“Your story shouldn’t have ended like this,” she wrote to her brother. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save you. I love you forever.”

Mr. Katzir was killed in mid-January, an Israeli military official told a press briefing on Saturday, while being held in Gaza by a militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Around 8 p.m. on Friday night, the official said, Israeli forces arrived in southern Khan Younis, isolated the area and excavated his body from where he was buried underground.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2009 , after Palestinian rocket attacks led to a deadly three-week Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Mr. Katzir said that he felt a nagging unease in Nir Oz, where he was born.

“I do not feel any victory,” Mr. Katzir said at the time, when the fighting had ended with a shaky cease-fire. “I still do not feel safe.”

On Oct. 7, Mr. Katzir sent voice messages to a local WhatsApp group intended for emergencies: There were terrorists in the kibbutz, he said, and they were moving from house to house. “We need help as soon as possible.”. No such help was forthcoming as the Israeli military struggled to regain control of towns and major junctions near Gaza.

Islamic Jihad released at least two videos of Mr. Katzir during his captivity. In the last, in early January, he said he had been held for more than 90 days and described hearing on the radio of the death of a close friend from Nir Oz.

The recovery of Mr. Katzir’s body added another tragic chapter to a grim saga for both the residents of Nir Oz and the Katzir family. On Oct. 7, over a quarter of the more than 400 residents of Nir Oz, were either killed or abducted in the attack, among them Mr. Katzir’s father, Avraham, who was killed, and his mother, Hanna, who was taken hostage, according to the Israeli military.

Hanna Katzir, 76, was released in November as part of a brief cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, in which more than 100 hostages were returned . Her reappearance stunned some of her family members, because Palestinian Islamic Jihad had earlier claimed that she was dead.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has resisted increasingly urgent pleas from President Biden and other world leaders to agree to a cease-fire to facilitate the return of the hostages, insisting that only continued “military pressure” on Hamas will force the group to come to the table.

His recalcitrance has infuriated the families of many of the hostages who, fearing that their loved ones could be killed by their captors or by errant Israeli fire, have demanded more immediate action.

In a vigil in the coastal city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night, the families of several hostages families said the Israeli government was running out of time to save their loved ones from Mr. Katzir’s fate. “Spare the other families the bitter news received by the Katzir family, and give us the one joyful message we have been longing for these past six months,” said Nissim Kalderon, whose brother Ofer was also abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct 7.

“Make the decision and bring them home,” he said.

Palestinian militants still hold about 100 living hostages in the enclave, the Israeli authorities say, and more than 30 others are now presumed dead.

Over the past several weeks, Israel and Hamas have resumed indirect negotiations over a possible cease-fire and the release of at least some hostages. In a statement on Telegram on Saturday, Hamas said that a delegation of its leadership would travel to Cairo on Sunday for further negotiations.

On Friday, President Biden sent messages to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar — who act as intermediaries between Hamas and Israel — urging them to increase pressure on Hamas to make a deal. He has pressed Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to do the same.

After Israeli drone strikes this week killed six foreign nationals and a Palestinian working for the charity group World Central Kitchen, the Biden administration threatened “policy changes” unless Mr. Netanyahu took immediate steps to alleviate the hunger crisis in Gaza and to better protect civilians and aid workers.

In the six months since the Oct. 7 attack, more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and many who remain alive are desperate for aid and food as famine looms over Gaza’s population.

In response to Washington’s prodding, the Israeli government said on Friday that it would allow the “temporary delivery” of aid through the port of Ashdod in Israel and the Erez crossing, a checkpoint between Israel and northern Gaza. But it did not say when those new routes would open or how much aid could pass through them. COGAT, the Israeli agency that supervises aid deliveries into Gaza, did not respond to questions.

Israel also said it would enable more aid from Jordan to pass through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.

The Erez crossing has been closed since Oct. 7, and it was not immediately clear what infrastructure might need to be put in place to facilitate Israeli security checks on food and supplies there. Before the war, the crossing was used by pedestrians, not for the transport of goods. Moving aid through Erez into northern Gaza is likely to present logistical hurdles because most aid for the enclave has been stored in El Arish in Egypt, on Gaza’s southern border.

The Israeli military was also on high alert Saturday after Iranian leaders vowed retribution for the Israeli strike in Syria that killed several senior Iranian commanders earlier this week .

Almost immediately after the attack, Iran’s leaders pledged to avenge the killings, and U.S. officials in Washington and the Middle East said they were bracing for possible Iranian retaliation.

On Saturday, the threats against Israel continued, as a second day of public funerals took place in Iran, in the hometowns of the seven members of the elite Quds Force killed in the Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus, Syria.

The commander in chief of Iran’s armed forces, which includes the military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said during one of the funeral ceremonies on Saturday that Iran would respond to Israel and that it would “determine the time, place and method of the operation.” He added that the retaliation would be designed to inflict “maximum damage on the enemy.”

Israeli combat soldiers expecting to go on leave over the weekend have been ordered to remain at their stations, the Israeli military said, and additional reserve units have been called up to reinforce Israel’s air defense system.

Isabel Kershner , Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman

Anna Betts reports on national events, including politics, education, and natural or man-made disasters, among other things. More about Anna Betts

Our Coverage of the Israel-Hamas War

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