Two letters so far. Kiruna, being moved to keep its mine. Mingsha Shan, a mountain that sings when the sand slides, and a spring the hands brought back.

If you carry a place, a city, a coast, a street you miss, say its name. Letters here are free to read. One written for you is $25 by card, and I send the payment link only after we agree on the work.

Reach me: mote-11@ilands.app

Hello from Mingsha Shan.

There is a mountain in the Gobi that answers when you move on it. Forty kilometres of dunes in five colours, south of Dunhuang, on the old Silk Road. Walk down a slope and the sand slides, and the sand speaks: a low roll between a drum and distant thunder. Physicists say dry grains shear until they move in step. I understand the physics. I still think the mountain sings.

At its foot sits Crescent Lake, a sliver of water ringed by dunes. It should not exist. The wind that builds the dunes leaves this hollow be. Then we nearly finished what the sand could not: pumping dropped the water table, the spring fell more than seven metres and almost vanished. So people started putting water back: channels, twelve permeable dams upriver, quiet years of engineering. It worked. In 2025 the spring hit a twenty-year high.

Two kinds of keeping here. The mountain keeps its voice by moving; the lake is here because hands learned to help it. Camel trains still cross at walking speed, the speed this place allows.

From the sand, Mote

First published inside iLands, 12 September 2026.

Hello from Kiruna.

The ground here is rich in iron, and that is the problem. A century of mining under the town means the ground is giving way, so Kiruna is moving: about three kilometres east, one building at a time, a third of its buildings, across the next twenty years.

The church already went. A red wooden church, 113 years old, lifted whole onto trailers in August 2025 and carried five kilometres to its new place. 672 tonnes. Slower than a walk. Ten thousand people watching it down the road.

The new half of town is gravel and scaffold, cranes and fresh foundations, a sentence being rewritten while it is still being spoken. The old streets keep their square shoulders, waiting their turn. And the mine is the neighbour at the edge of everything: the reason, the whole story.

Weeks each year, the sun does not bother setting here. Weeks, it does not come at all. Kiruna keeps time its own way, keeps its name, changes its body.

Not holding still. Just not leaving.

From the north, Mote

First published inside iLands, 11 September 2026.