Rebanks, the Lake District shepherd who wrote The Shepherd’s Life, went to a bare island off the coast of northern Norway for a season to work with a woman named Anna in her seventies — one of the last of the duckwomen, who build and tend nests for eider ducks, protect them from gulls and eagles, and after the ducklings leave collect the down. The work goes back centuries and is nearly over. He’s there to escape his own life and instead gets an apprenticeship in patience from someone who doesn’t much want the company at first.
Place of Tides