First There is a Mountain, Anthology
“Lift a handful of sand, let it slip between your fingers and contemplate the eons that have passed, the civilisations that have risen and crumbled away before time milled it to this fineness. It drifts and obscures, burying crops, grazing land, cities and entire civilisations; yet sometimes it shifts to reveal what has been lost.” James Attlee
“Someone once tried to explain the concept of infinity to me by saying that if an eagle flew past a mountain every million years and touched it lightly with its wingtip, by the time the mountain had crumbled to nothing, that might equate to one second of forever.” Helen Pheby
“An expanse of sand is the most eternal of landscapes and the most changeable. As we build our mountains, we remember that our labours are ephemeral, our lives are short and everything must change.” Patrick Barkham
“Sand is mesmerising: both ordinary and enchanted, intimate and infinite, a marker of time – the three-minute egg: the five-minute essay – as well as of infinities of scale…” Richard Hamblyn
“How small, how fragile can a work of art be before it drifts away on the wind or floats out to sea? And how large, or long-drawn-out, before we are unable to apprehend it all at once?” Brian Dillon