A healing sanctuary during a time of great trouble in the world. A place where inspiration lies in massive majestic vistas and small encounters. And a place of mystery at the edge of the ocean.

In “The Landscape About Us: A SouthCoast Anthology,” 25 local authors and photographers tell the story of how their lives intertwine with Westport and the greater South Coast. A project of Midori Creativity and the Westport Writers Group, the collection of essays, photography, poetry and fiction will be presented at two readings in May, coinciding with Art Week SouthCoast, and will also be featured at the upcoming “Meditations on Landscape” festival at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in June.

“The book asks questions about our relationship to the landscapes we are surrounded by,” Midori Evans, founder of Midori Creativity, said. “How does the landscape connect our own thoughts and also bring us closer to one another?”

Divided into three sections — "Inner and Outer Landscapes,"  "There Are No Straight Lines" and "Connections" the anthology welcomes various interpretations of landscape, be they communal, individual, agricultural or metaphorical. And the authors' descriptions and insights are as varied as Westport’s landscape, from its farm fields to the ancient cemeteries laying hidden in its woods, to the shore of Buzzards Bay.

Contributor Rebecca Eaton, who moved here just as the pandemic began, reflects on how she found peace and a connection with the past and present after moving here following her retirement and a battle with cancer.

"... before I’d even had a chance to experience one full season in my new landscape, it was March 2020 and there was a pandemic in the world. I couldn’t go anywhere else," she writes. "I began to feel that I had been led to this place because it was the sanctuary that I, and my family, were going to need.

As she learned more about her home, her connection with Westport grew deeper, and she began to feel part of a continuum as she learned of her land's ties to early Westport. As time passed, the place helped heal her:

“I have found sanctuary and deep comfort and benediction in my view, my vista, my landscape. It is as beautifully nuanced as a John Constable painting of an English countryside, but it is alive. Everything in it is living and growing and dying. Yes, there is evidence of human suffering, and even death, all around me but also evidence, proof, that great natural beauty has prevailed, as has man’s humanity to men."

Paull Goodchild writes of a woman, unidentified in his essay, who finds peace here even as time strips her of the many things she has known over her many years. Inhabiting an addition to the main home she rents out to a young family, she needs nothing more but the view out her window.

"Widowed, then predeceased by her daughter many years ago, she had thought herself inured to loss: a stolid swamp yankee who perseveres. Lately, though, it seems all the good people are dying or moving south. Come Sunday, more pews sit empty than ever before. A tickle in her chest makes her cough lightly. Oh, she should see the doctor, find out what it is, but she will not. She has an idea, and that is enough. Just look at that view.”

"Her sister said she was crazy to buy that ramshackle saltbox just for the view," Goodchild adds. "Of course, now the realtors beg her to sell. Oh, she would be a wealthy woman and could travel the world in style, they say, but she stops them before they can say a number. She has an idea, and that is enough. She prefers her view."

Public readings

Excerpts from “The Landscape About Us: A SouthCoast Anthology" will be read:

• Tuesday, May 14, 5 p.m.: Davoll's General Store, Dartmouth. This reading is part of the Art Week SouthCoast festival.

• Saturday, May 18, 1 p.m.: The Westport Free Public Library. This reading is part of the Art Week SouthCoast festival.

• Friday, June 21, at the Meditations on Landscape festival, at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport.

The program is suppored in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Westport Cultural Council. For more information about Westport Writes, see www.midoricreativity.com/writers.