Why Can't We Stay Here Forever: Musings from The Nest

From October 2016 till March 2023, the author and her husband, Peter took up residence at The Nest, a colonial hill bungalow built in 1887 in Taiping, Malaysia. In the early years until landslides rendered road access impossible, they took in guests to sustain the building and its surroundings. The Nest, located in a remote setting of pristine highland forests, proffered extraordinary experiences of the breathtaking natural world that surrounded them.

This collection of essays, photographs and extracts of sketches and guest notes depicts the various aspects of these experiences; from real and imagined meetings with creatures of the forests, lessons in the cycle of our existence, riveting kitchen visitors to the detailing of building a much-loved dining table. Together, they form a pastiche of recollections that remind us of this intricate web of life of which we are a part. In turns moving, humorous and scientific in detail, Why can’t we stay here forever brings together these threads to form a tapestry of what our world is, and can be.

Underlying this collection is a compelling sense of wonder. It is this which spurs us to defend places like The Nest and her setting and leads us to re-imagine a world where we can live peaceably with the Earth and all her creatures, great and small.

About the Author

Liew Suet Fun has written 21 books of non-fiction and poetry. They include “One Day, Three Autumns - of longing and remembrance”, “Beguiled on Larut Hills”, “After long rainy afternoons - of Taiping and her people” and “Discourse with Birds - Poems of Malaysia”.