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Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family—but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
-Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock

In the woods it is surreal. Just like in life, one moment we are in almost blinding sunlight, the next pitched under a dark blanket where the temperature is ten degrees cooler ... I am neither a man nor a woman but a sole survivor

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Drowned' man resurfaces 22 years later
When I was about to turn 40 - 40 is huge as life begins at 40 - I thought, what are you waiting for? My next life? So I made a vow to myself that I would try to get my sad story across the Iron Curtain published. Indeed, Cold River is latest in long line of surreal and tragic embodiments of ordinary man that have, in loneliness, defeat and occasional glory, populated Central European stories. Rowing, like writing, is like that, it's a constant interplay of thought and emotion between boat and rower caught in the (im)perfect storm, which, to ignore, could in fact be dangerous to the rower

We freeze some moments in time. Every country has its frozen moments, events so tragic and personal that they transcend the normal flow of stories. Can one person make a difference? It's easy to be cynical about the power of one. But a person's importance, so difficult to quantify in life, is perhaps more easily measured in death – and the gaping holes left behind.

• Cold River is a surreal slice of Iron Curtain Every exit is an entry somewhere else [Towards Colder Rivers]

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi