A Vast Circular Expanse Before You

Jeff Klinkenberg: SALT SPRINGS



Tom Hallock slips into the vegetation past the cabbage palms and the live oaks and the bay magnolia. A pileated woodpecker hammers a distant pine and the katydids hum what sounds like a requiem. There is no sign of William Bartram, but Hallock has a good imagination.



Closing his eyes, Hallock can imagine the 18th century naturalist creeping carefully through the hammock, stopping, shunting aside the leaves, scrawling something in a notebook with a stubby pencil.



Hallock can imagine the lonely young man breathing in mosquitoes and brushing the ticks from his leggings, all the while trying to make sense of primeval Florida and perhaps his own damaged…