Description
Calmly on the Waters
Seasonal Essays From Monadnock
Illustrated by Nora S. Unwin
Quiet, attentive, and occasionally humorous, Jarvis Coffin’s essays invite readers to slow down and observe a world reachable “on two feet, or by canoe, or by car, with no more than a tank of gas.” Written against the backdrop of deep winters, uncertain springs, brief summers, and colorful autumns, Calmly on the Waters is organized by season, following the rhythms that shape daily life in rural New England.
Coffin writes, “Winter is the sum of many small survival stories, while spring starts in the basement, where we wait in the damp for the earth to thaw. Summer means one thing—growing season—until, finally, fall, possessed of a thick, forested landscape and all the colors of the rainbow, gets the last word”
At a time when public life feels divided and accelerated, Coffin’s essays return to shared experience—weather, work, animals, neighbors, family—and the steady companionship of the natural world. They are meant to be read with morning coffee or at night, before the light goes out.
Originally from England, the noted illustrator Nora S. Unwin (1907-1982) spent much of her life in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Most of her collection of wood engravings and blocks, sketches, and watercolors is housed at The Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough.
For more than a decade, as co-owner with his wife of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, The Hancock Inn (now The Inn at Hancock), Jarvis Coffin offered a steady sense of place in conversations with travelers from around the world, and in popular, monthly essays sent to the inn’s guest list.
Coffin spent three decades as a media and advertising sales executive before becoming an innkeeper and chef in New Hampshire. Today, he writes full time, penning fiction and essays on rural life in southern New Hampshire. His short fiction has been published in Down in the Dirt, The Swannanoa Review, and ellipsis . . . literature and art.
Coffin lives with his wife in a cedar log cabin by a pond in southern New Hampshire with their dog, Huckleberry.
For decades as both features editor and then editor-in-chief of Yankee magazine, I had the pleasure of editing Edie Clark’s essays of her life at her rural New Hampshire home. Her “Mary’s Farm” column became beloved by tens of thousands. When I read Jarvis Coffin’s Calmly on the Waters, his collection of essays from his own rural New Hampshire Eden, I know the pages will also resonate with anyone who believes that close observation of the natural world can be a balm for the soul in our turbulent times. What makes Coffin’s essays so readable is his light humor and gentle touch. “I am awed by life’s persistence, which even in the smallest of creatures always appears greater than mine, carrying knowledge as deep or deeper,” he writes. The reader will want to join Coffin and share in his awe as the New England seasons come and go. This is a book to connect with all of us, wherever we live.
—Mel Allen, author of Here in New England
As the town’s inkeeper, Jarvis Coffin perfected the art of hospitality—and here in these pages, he welcomes readers to our town. Hancock, New Hampshire, abounds with fall foliage, snow, ice, mud, black flies, ticks, spring birdsong, summer fireflies, ponds, woods, and quirky human and animal neighbors. His acutely observed essays—sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, always delightful—give you a feel for the place I love most in this sweet green world.
—Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig
A fine ramble through the natural year, written with a host of telling similes and metaphors, a sense of humor, and little-known but important facts—such as the number of ticks on a moose in any given summer.
—John Hanson Mitchell, author of The Garden at the End of Time: Getting By in the Age of Climate Change
