A young boy finds a clearing while exploring the wilderness and meditatively observes the nature around him.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

By trampling the grass as he walks the same route over and over to gather clams, an elderly man makes space for a bounty of primroses to flourish, which allows the moths and other pollinators to thrive. When he dies, the roses and moths follow suit.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

Two American friends escape their vacation in Paris to the French countryside, enjoying a day of fresh air until a Russian waiter and an Austrian remind them of the horrors of war.

An English topographer travels to India, separating him from his pregnant wife and daughter. Over the course of the year-long expedition, he discovers a new passion and finds he wants to stay longer.

When an anthropology professor moves with his family to a remote home on the Great Plains, a new friendship with an idealist, a landscaping disaster, and a disheartening consultation with an Indigenous man shake his beliefs about cultural relativism to the core.

A former geologist lies down in a hospital bed and remembers the Native woman he had fallen in love with during his travels.

One night in the late 1960s, an American couple vacationing at a lake in Germany gets split up, filling both with dread and fear as they are pushed to their limits trying to reunite.

A quarreling married couple takes a trip to the mountains in Colorado in an attempt to save their marriage, but disaster strikes when they see a pair of young mountain climbers fall, leading to a perilous rescue mission.