H is for Hawk

Helen Macdonald

Helen Macdonald’s book is part memoir of grief, part close literary study, and somehow also a tale of rewilding—not of the landscape, but of the author herself.

Vesper Flights

Helen Macdonald

The titular essay in this collection concerns the flight of swifts: twice a day, at twilight, they fly high up into the sky, a movement Macdonald describes as both a devotion and a kind of planning.