by Miriam Sharland
After nearly two decades in the country, Miriam Sharland was set to move back to the UK in early 2020. Then the borders closed. Heart Stood Still (Otago University Press, 2024) is a series of personal essays based on her journal entries from that time.
The pieces follow the pattern of the seasons, and as she weaves through them she weaves too through family stories, the history and ecology of the Manawatū, the climate crisis, and how, living alone, she navigated lockdown.
This included taking up foraging mushrooms (and learning about them, like how you can find out if a mushroom is edibles by placing gill side down to see if it leaves a print), connecting with neighbours and taking to the blissfully empty streets on her bike – gifts bestowed by those unlikely times.
Heart Stood Still took me back there, to how for a minute it seemed like the pandemic might point us to a different way of living. This feels familiar: “I was too busy moving forwards, or sideways, or backwards, rather than just stopping and looking at where I was now. And once I stopped the past reappeared and everything began to fall into place.”
It also reminded me how intrusive and regressive it felt when all the cars came back.
We need your help
READ MORE
Laura Williamson
