In November 2020 Sean Hamilton went to secluded Dunn Lake, British Columbia looking for something. What that something was he did not know, but he followed the strong pull that was begging him to retreat into nature. Sean remained alone in the woods until the end of December. The lessons gained from his solitude may only ever be fully known to him, but while spending this time by himself, Sean ran mile after mile and produced a beautiful book of poems, or as he refers to it, “a training log and corresponding field notes.” “Running Through the Woods, The River Gentle on My Mind” is a poignant personal meditation on a particular place and time. Though the book holds the reflections of one man, the questions raised are perhaps universal questions and ones to which immediate answers may not be available. Perhaps, instead, as Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in “Letters to a Young Poet” we will “gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” This is an intimate conversation about transformation, solitude, loss, creativity, inner strength, the beauty of nature, and one man’s reflections on his relationship to all of it.

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Shoulder Season:

“I am a wanderer,

lingering between homebody and vagabond,

unfixed to a permanent address.

I am a shoulder season,

shifting without prolonged expectation,

untethered from assumption or prediction.

I am March 20th,

hovering on the final page of the chapter,

unpredictable as to what may come.

I am at a loss,

lusting to be freed from the cage of specificity,

unchained to title, category or subspecies.

It’s just earth and weather and water and beings.

I am a part of it.”