This Great Hunger

Here’s Bradford Winters on his family’s recent trip to Ireland, and “this great hunger”:

For when I came to Ireland entirely well-fed and altogether famished, I came planning that our family sabbatical would double in ways as an individual semi-retreat. I would be working, yes, but far away from the hectic elements of life back in Brooklyn: no daily commute except the shuffle from bedroom to home office; no alternate-side parking rules in effect; no fire trucks, no walk-up, our youngest off at playschool.

Best of all, pictures of the house had featured a conservatory facing the sea; and one not furnished as a sitting room, but kept spare as a yoga room. With 180 degree views by day and a window on the heavens by night, it would be my glass tabernacle in the blue-green wilderness. A sanctuary in which to practice my Son salutations before sunup.

Read the whole thing at Image‘s Good Letters blog.