The Dunites | Norm Hammond
There are ghosts in the dunes of Oceano, though not all of them belong to the dead.
Some belong to the old ways of living. To the little cabins that once stood half-buried in the sand, to the poets who wrote beneath the light of oil lamps, and to the men and women who wandered west until there was no more land beneath their feet.
They called themselves the Dunites.
A scattered congregation of artists, philosophers, hermits, and wandering souls who made their homes among the great sand hills of California’s Central Coast. They lived with little, asked for less, and found in those lonely stretches of earth something the civilized world could not give them.
In this remarkable little book, Norm Hammond gathers what remains of their history. The names, the dwellings, the poetry, the hardships, and the ordinary affairs of those who chose to make a home in a place where the wind was forever rearranging the earth beneath them.
I have kept the Dunites close to my heart for many years. Their history has followed me through old books, forgotten photographs, and long afternoons spent wandering the places where their cabins once stood. There is a certain sorrow in studying a vanished people, particularly when the land itself has been so thorough in concealing their existence.
And yet, I have never believed them entirely gone.
Their way of life, their peculiar devotion to solitude, their poetry, and their affection for the wild and ungoverned world have had no small hand in the making of Smokey Lonesomes. In many ways, this house was built upon the very stories preserved in these pages.
So I recommend this book with something more than a bookseller’s interest. I recommend it as someone who has made a home for these histories, who has gathered the old things and the forgotten words, and who hopes, in some small way, to keep their memory from being carried off with the sand.
For the students of forgotten places, the keepers of old stories, and those who have always suspected there was another way to live.
Condition: Preowned paperback with light signs of age and handling. Cover, spine, and interior pages appear well preserved. Please examine photographs for further details.
The Dunites | Norm Hammond
There are ghosts in the dunes of Oceano, though not all of them belong to the dead.
Some belong to the old ways of living. To the little cabins that once stood half-buried in the sand, to the poets who wrote beneath the light of oil lamps, and to the men and women who wandered west until there was no more land beneath their feet.
They called themselves the Dunites.
A scattered congregation of artists, philosophers, hermits, and wandering souls who made their homes among the great sand hills of California’s Central Coast. They lived with little, asked for less, and found in those lonely stretches of earth something the civilized world could not give them.
In this remarkable little book, Norm Hammond gathers what remains of their history. The names, the dwellings, the poetry, the hardships, and the ordinary affairs of those who chose to make a home in a place where the wind was forever rearranging the earth beneath them.
I have kept the Dunites close to my heart for many years. Their history has followed me through old books, forgotten photographs, and long afternoons spent wandering the places where their cabins once stood. There is a certain sorrow in studying a vanished people, particularly when the land itself has been so thorough in concealing their existence.
And yet, I have never believed them entirely gone.
Their way of life, their peculiar devotion to solitude, their poetry, and their affection for the wild and ungoverned world have had no small hand in the making of Smokey Lonesomes. In many ways, this house was built upon the very stories preserved in these pages.
So I recommend this book with something more than a bookseller’s interest. I recommend it as someone who has made a home for these histories, who has gathered the old things and the forgotten words, and who hopes, in some small way, to keep their memory from being carried off with the sand.
For the students of forgotten places, the keepers of old stories, and those who have always suspected there was another way to live.
Condition: Preowned paperback with light signs of age and handling. Cover, spine, and interior pages appear well preserved. Please examine photographs for further details.
