This Hill, This Valley

An Inspiring Year on a New England Hill Farm

Hal Borland, whose nature essays graced the Sunday New York Times for almost 4 decades, transported readers to a simpler time and place by his intimate perspective on weather, flowers, birds, and the changing seasons. After being hospitalized with a dangerous bout of appendicitis and reassessing his values, he and his wife decided to retreat to a farm in the Berkshire Hills of northwest Connecticut. From that place-for 36 years-he composed the essays which provided a calming rejuvenation for his legions of avid followers.

Borland describes his process: “We came here, not to a cabin in the wilderness but to a farmhouse beside a river. I have spent the months and years since, living with this small fraction of the universe and trying to know its meaning-to own it, that is, in terms of observation and understanding.”

This Hill, This Valley ushers us eloquently through a year on the farm in an area known as Weatogue: Spring: (“The apple trees are in bloom, and a magnificent sight”); summer: (“One of the most difficult of all sounds to put down on paper is the song of a bird.”); autumn: (“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also the wider horizon more clearly seen.”); winter: (“The sparrows make Winter a pleasanter time for any countryman.”)

Deeply satisfying, these classic vignettes may be enjoyed for just a few minutes or all afternoon.

Be sure to read Hall Borland’s other bestselling classics, also available from Echo Point Books: When the Legends Die: The Timeless Coming-of-Age Story about a Native American Boy Caught Between Two Worlds (hardcover 1635618630, paperback 1635618649); The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir (hardcover 1635618835, paperback 1635618843); and High, Wide and Lonesome: Growing Up on the Colorado Frontier (paperback 1635618827). This Hill, This Valley is also available from Echo Point Books in paperback (1635619106).

Author Biography

Hal Borland’s first outdoor essay appeared in The New York Times in the fall of 1941 and since then he has published some 1,200 more, many of them having been reprinted in anthologies and English textbooks. The essays have continued through the years to draw a large reader mail-from all over the United States and occasionally from abroad. Mr. Borland and his wife, author Barbara Dodge Borland, have lived for the past sev- eral years on their farm in Connecticut’s lower Berkshire Hills. He was bom in Nebraska; much of his boyhood was spent on a homestead in eastern Colorado – re- captured memorably in one of his most pop- ular’ books, High, Wide and Lonesome. He was graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and received a Litt.D. degree from the University of Colorado in 1944.