Tag: NATURE WRITING

The accidental garden by Richard Mabey

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The accidental garden by Richard Mabey

Nature writing

Source – Library

I mentioned just before I left that I had obtained a number of the Wainwright longlist books for nature writing. So far, I have read this, and one of the initial books that jumped out at me. I think it was purely because I had a Little Toller classic from Mabey; he is one of the greats of nature writing in recent years. He hasn’t won the Wainwright prize but has won several other awards. This was also set in Norfolk, and since our holiday was in Suffolk, a book about the local nature appealed to me. Mabey is known for his writing, particularly around foraging for food, so this tale of his garden shows how man and nature can work together.

So being as realistic as we could, we decided to divide our responsibilities, though it it was hardly a fair appor-tionment. Polly, the energetic one, wise in the cultivation of things, would attend to the more organised parts of the garden, raising vegetables and making the best of the herbaceous border we’d inherited. I’d take on the wood and the pond and the rough grassland between. A soft touch, I admit, but philosophical pondering takes it out of you, too. I’ve always been foxed by vegetable gardening, bewildered by the refusal of these pampered plants to follow any botanical rules.

Polly set to work almost immediately in what became her very personalised style. She created strange-shaped beds, edged with stones or transplanted wildflowers – poppies, cornflowers, feverfew. She hung up switches of thyme as insect deterrents using bindweed as string. Soon a galaxy of other wildings made a bid to be the vegetables ornaments: tutsan, thornapple (whose seeds must have been dormant in the soil), foxgloves and felt-leaved mul-leins. It was about as wild and Wicca as it could be within the discipline of raising a crop.

It is about the plants and the rewilding in parts of the garden as a soft obrder to the surrounding nature \1

Mabey talks about his garden, a boundary between his home and the wild world beyond his garden, a place full of wildflowers As he wanders around his place in Norfolk, he talks about various writers and poets, and this is mirrored about how he talks about juis garden the way we look at gardens they can be so much more than lawns. This shows how Richard, over the course of twenty years, had worked his garden to be part of the surrounding environment, rather than just a garden. If that makes sense, he was championing what is rewilding, those little bits of land left to go back to how they were, to allow nature to creep back in!

But I can hear my old philosophy tutor, John Simo-polous, reprimanding me. ‘Richard, you know very well what people mean when they say “reconnecting with nature”: Oxford philosophy in the 1960s had a strong interest in ‘ordinary language use’. John once set me an essay on ‘is a broken promise a lie?’, and he would have urged me to respect this usage as signifying a conscious engagement with the natural world, and more ordinarily of a time spent outdoors with forms and systems of life that aren’t entirely determined by humans.

Yet such a casual attitude towards the language we use to describe our relations with the rest of creation is now counterproductive. It’s creating gross generalisations, false chains of cause and effect and dangerous hierarchies of organisms. The ‘tree’ trumps all other plants; ‘pests’ include any organism that someone, somewhere finds irritating. As for ‘nature’, I’ve collected a few of the more extreme uses of the idea over the years. Pride of place must go to the Tree Council’s declaration during the great storm of 1987 that ‘Trees are at great danger from nature’ – thus placing the republic of trees entirely within the kinedom of man

Trees are the life blood of our nation its shame we have lost so many

I like Mabey’s style of writing, where the natural and literary worlds are hand in hand in his words, as we follow the years spent gently working his garden, intertwined with the local nature and the world he lives in. The writers he reads, like John Clare, amaze me with how their poetry rings through the centuries. This is a book that captures our gardens and what they can be, a little of letting wildflowers in, and maybe being a little free with how our garden looks. But he also captures how the Englishman’s garden is so much more than he says: the seas of grass, we can have so much more in it. How the lines between nature and gardens can blur over time.I loved this book I will read his earlier book at a later date Have you read this or any of the longlist books for this years Wainwright Prize ?

 

The English path by Kim Taplin

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The English path by Kim Taplin

Nature writing

Personal copy

I have brought several books from the Little Toller nature classic series over the last few years. I love the design of the books; they are also a way to build a collection of the great natural writers of the past. I had wanted a nature writing read since watching the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady the other week. This is one of the more recent releases from the Nature classic series. It was by the Poet and Nature writer Kim Taplin this book won an award when it came out in 1984 and was her first collection of nature writing she also published a book later on that follow Jerrome K Jerome trip up the thames except it was three women in the boat (That siiounds interesting I like book s that retrace famous trips ).

Our present footpath network contains some tracks which go back to prehistoric times, and others from every period in history right down to the few, the very few, that are created today. Most paths are more than a hundred years old. To appreciate what these paths have meant to country people, from the simplest, like Richard Jefferies’ cottagers, who only knew that ‘there always wur a path athwert thuck mead in the ould volk’s time’, to the most educated, like Andrew Young, who knew that:

Foot of Briton, formal Roman Saxon and Dane and Sussex yeoman

had hollowed the lane before him, we need to realise that the paths which connected people with their neighbours also connected them with their forefathers.

The opening lines of the book

The book is divided into chapters, each with a theme around English country paths and how they came about over time. From the early routes from village to village that predate the 20th century, most people used them daily. She uses a lot of references to great writers to illustrate how various paths around the countryside were made and used in the past. Unlike in the present, where it was mainly for leisure and enjoyment, many old paths served purposes such as routes from A to B, ways to get to certain places. This is all connected with lots of poetic and prose quotes from some of the great writers of the English countryside, from Thomas Hardy’s Dorset to the Glastonbury and surrounding area of John Cowper Powys and his brother Llewelyn, as well. To the great Poet John Clare, the history of paths and the writers who wrote about them over time builds up. Powys is a writer whose books I have picked up recently, and Clare is a poet I have loved since I read many of his poems in the Penguin Book of Bird Poetry many years ago.

Whether Mrs Susannah wounded the unhappy Samuel intentionally will never be known. But in the eighteenth-century it probably took more than ankles to do it. Not so in Dickens’ time:

Mr Pickwick was joking with the young ladies who wouldn’t come over the stile while he looked, or who, having pretty feet and unexceptionable ankles, preferred standing on the top-rail for five minutes or so, and declaring that they were too frightened to move … Mr Snodgrass offered Emily far more assistance than the absolute terrors of the stile (although it was full three feet high, and had only a couple of stepping stones) would seem to require; while one black-eyed young lady in a very nice little pair of boots with fur round the top, was observed to scream very loudly, when Mr Winkle offered to help her over.

Stiles, gates, stepping stones and rough or wet places all give opportunities for flirtation, and stiles as well as kissing gates often commanded a toll.

Clare understood the rules of the flirtation game, and the gallantry and coquetry involved. At first, the lover is humble:

I had to pick a Dicken quote and I have always loved Mr Pickwick

This is one of those books. When you read it, you must go back and underline and mark quotes to remember them. Then, get a little notebook and list all the books and writers mentioned to form a list of future books to Buy. I was reminded of writers like Robert McFarland and WG Sebald, both of whom capture Nature and the way nature is captured by other writers so well in their own writing. It reminds you that although a lot of the English countryside is wonderfully serene, for walking and wandering, there was a time when it was full of work and people doing jobs, and paths were just for their work or to get to work, etc. This is a book that will leave you with a vast list of books to read after it, all the books she quotes from, and there were a few I wasn’t aware of, I will be looking out for.Have you read this or any of the other books in the Little Toller nature classic series?

Snow by Marcus Sedgwick

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Snow by Marcus Sedgwick

English non-fiction

Source – Personal copy

I love to listen to a little bit of Radio or some talking in bed I tend to drop off in under ten minutes of being in bed I’m fast on anyway last week or the week before this was on over a week. I listened the first night and liked his style. Then I listened the next night and thought that the writer’s name sounded familiar. I woke next day and looked up the book and found it was one of the Nature books I buy every time I visit where my mum’s ashes are spread. I usually visit the local Waterstones and buy some Nature writing mum loved nature and I chose this as one of my favourite books of all time is Emily Miano’s book Around Snow. Marcus was mainly a writer of Children’s fiction he had won a lot of prizes for his fiction but he also wrote several non-fiction works. He wrote this a couple of years after moving to the Alps in France. Also this was published by Little Roller as part of a series alongside the other series of classic Nature writing I have loved the couple of books I have read so far.

All my life I have loved the snow; ever since boyhood, when it seemed that every year was blessed, if you see it that way, with a heavy snowfall. There were hard winters when I was a child, growing up in the Far East. The far east that is, of Kent, close enough to the continent to be swept by their snow clouds, and it was an utter delight for my brother and me when our parents declared that the roads from our village to school, only a few miles away, were impassable once again.It didn’t take much snow to do it; the sunken rural roads that ran out of the orchards and across open wind-swept cabbage fields were easily prone to collect drifting snow, sealing us happily into our tiny village.

I was reminded of a drift in 1981 that covered most of the ground floor of the house we lived in windows,

It felt right a week after the first snow to cover this collection of essays around Snow. Marcus talks about the childhood love of snow we all have..His new Home in the Alps which he pointed out was at the same height as the summit of Snowden and how he found out what real snow was when he got there. How the plough when the snow fell a certain way would block his drive. Then digressios into how flakes form different types of snow how many words some Languages have for snow and the certain myths about this as well. Seeing certain weather phenomena he had seen caused by snow. He touches on Schubert Winterrreise how he wrote it how it was so sad and dark in parts and was written near his death(I must listen in depth to this again at some point anyone suggest a good recording of it ) He was known to be a huge fan of Thomas Mann and this crops up in the book as well. It is a slim work that links into how snow affects us all at times and also how it can inspire us at times.

Today, a Schubertiade is a gathering of musicians performing works by, or inspired by, the Austrian composer. These affairs began as little salons at his patrons houses, for his friends and benefactors, often to trial new pieces. Winterreise falls into two halves of twelve songs each. The story goes that Schubert called his friends togethet, one evening in 1827, to hear him perform the first half. When he finished, there was stony silence, disbelieving faces. What was this utterly bleak and strange music that their hero had composed?

That was the first half the later part is meant be darker I must listen to this piece of music

They were dumbstruck by the weirdness and terror of the piece, and yet the first half, the half they’d witnessed, is nothing to the second, something so completely desolate it makes the first twelve songs appear like the dream of a summer’s picnic.

 

I’m pleased I got to this I had want to try read another nature book before the ned of the year and this is a great book for winter and can easily be read in an evening and if you like writers that go from point a to b but takes us on a trip as they do that this is a book for you. His view like my own we had more snow when we were young he proves this when he gets the Met Office records for his childhood home in Kent and finds yes in the 60s there were three times as many snow days as in the last ten years. He mixes art, literature and tales of snow into a book that is fun to read and packed full of little facts and insights. Other parts of the book, reminded me of a colleague I used to work with a former merchant sailor, he had gone to Siberia on an early trip and been shocked by the snow and how cold it was there is talk of people finding arctic conditions hard. Have you read any of the books in this Series.?

Winston’s score – A – perfect to be inside warm on a winter evening reading about snow!

Nightwalking by John Lewis Stempel

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Nightwalking four journeys into Britain after dark by John Lewis STEMPEL

Nature writing

Source – personal copy

Life is made of routines at times or things we do at a certain time or place. For me one of these routines is whenever I go to Macclesfield to put flowers where we spread my mum’s ash a number of years ago. We pop to the town centre and I always now buy a piece of nature writing at the Waterstones there it is a ritual a connection to my mum but also my grandfather is there as well a man who paid for my young ornithologist membership when I was young g in fact that was the first connection to nature writing the magazine there but also the many young people that wrote in around there own local nature. So with the Alfred Wainwright’s longest, I may try and read a number of the books from the list like last year. So the choice of a book from a writer that has won said prize twice before is a good choice before the list comes out and it also reminds me of my late-night walks back when I lived in Alnwick many years ago.

I began night walking out of necessity. The congenial village pub that served Wadsworth’s 6X the underage was not, alas, situated in my village, so required a three-mile perambulation home at closing time. The path to my den was along the downstream bank of the River Wye. One midnight I witnessed barn owls, ghostly raptorial spheres, hunting over the December-frosted water meadow. In the heat of a summer night, aroused with the aroma of elderflowers, Daubenton’s bats vortexed around my head so closely that I knew the cooling breath of their leather wings on my face. Often there was the sheer romance of moonlight on water. And thus a teenage prerequisite became a lifetime pleasure.

I remember many a walk back from the pub in my youth as well.

We see much of the season changes in the day in Nature writing it is easy to see and observe but the night is another question either too cold or too short in the summer. But we follow John on some walks over the seasons winter I remember winter walks dark of the night like HJ=John I have seen owls and bats on those cold dark nights I used walkthrough the edge of the Duke land a strip of land at the back of the estate once a victorian tip it still had many a broken bottle and pots from the era visible. I loved this walk in a dark night a time before phones had absorbed what we have to think about the breath in the air as a flutter of wings passes you or as in the book we hear and see Badgers those shy creatures of the night. We see John as he observes nature both wild and those farms as he passes them sometimes on the way home from the pub as he has had a couple of Wadworth 6x a pint I may have two or three of them over the years. Hedgehogs seen going about their business like in the Potter books they do look like little busybodies as they go through the night. Then there is the spectre of TB  over the land he farms those creatures of the night are often the villain of its spread. He captures nature throughout the year when the night is there.

20 June: I stopped by the copse, where the track enters the trees, on the second lightest evening of the year. It was past ten, but I could see the shape of the hills, the thirsty cattle drinking from the trough down in the meadow, the breeze in the barley, and the watermark tracks where the deer had wandered through the wheat. Across the twilit valley, the hay had just been cut, the bales stacked in dark towers, but the mowed ground glowed with the heat of the days. Getting out of the car, the pale mauve sky was gentle and warm, and it seemed to me then that winter had never been, and never would be again.

The noise of farm animals at night  always sounds so much louder than in the day.

What makes great nature writing to me is a writer that draws you in and makes the world around them seem to come to life those little observations and mannerisms of creatures he picks up so well on I have a couple of other books by him and will be reading them over time as he is called the finest living nature writer that is a hard burden but he brings to life that world he is observing .and reminds us how much of nature is there after dark from the birds and bats of nights to those creatures we rarely see other than when they sadly get hit overnight on the way around their world I miss my late night walks but who knows there is many a year left to take a walk at night and see those creatures of the night in the habit. Have you a favourite nature writer ?

Winstons score – a . A book that evokes a year of night walks.

What we leave behind by Stanislaw Łubieński

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What we leave behind by Stanislaw Łubieński

Polish Nature Writing

Original tile – Książka o śmieciach

Translator – Zosia Krasodomska-Jones

Source – review copy

As many of you know the last twelve months I have featured a lot more nature writing on the blog so when I was sent a book in translation. that was a nature book it was great to combine to the two genres I really love books in translation and Nature writing. Stanislaw has written a number of books. He contributes regularly to paper in Polish papers and magazines this is his first book to be translated into English. He won the NIKE reader prize for one of his earlier books. The birds they sing. It says on his bio he grew up watching birds with his Soviet binoculars (reminds me of the early days I used bird watch a lot with my grandad’s old military binoculars).

Let’s start with a clarification to avoid any misunderstandings: hunting ducks has no practical justification – it’s purely for sport. A display of dexterity, like shooting live clay pigeons.

But what have the ducks done to deserve to die? Pond owners sometimes complain that they eat fish food. They certainly do. According to studies from the 1980s, they eat between 2 and 7,5 per cent of distributed feed. That’s not very much.

Scientists say that the presence of many bird species at ponds brings advantages that outweigh the drawbacks. Ducks, coots, grebes and even herons prevent the surface water from becoming overgrown, they eat the larvae of predacious insects that feed on spawn and fry, and they clear sick or dead fish from the surfaces Why do we kill ducks, then? Simple: it’s tradition.

The question about the value of Duck hunting is there any these Days !!

The book has the subtle A birdwatcher’s dispatches from the taste catastrophe. The book is formed of eight chapters a number of which take waste he had found. As you know I love correlations to my own life as a reader the journey isn’t just that of escape but sometimes reminds inklings of one’s own world and experiences. The first chapter had a collection of shotgun cartridges just left in the woods he speaks about the growing anti-hunting movements around Europe the ducks in the pond. reminded me of seeing shells often in the area I walked around Northumberland when I lived there many years ago with my dog. What Stanislaw does is mix the waste we see and the world he observes it just shows you how near we are to losing it all at times. The third chapter mentioned Gannets which as I had this some been to North Berwick home to one of the biggest Gannet colonies. He talks about the discovery of huge bands of waste drifting in the oceans discovered by sailors I remember how a container of Rubber ducks scattered in the sea. It had shown how far rubbish lost in the oceans can drift. But the worrying thing he talks about is microplastics are now getting into our food chain and the effects of that are relatively unknown long term. A book that sets you thinking and being watchful about your own impact on the world around you.

It’s more than twenty years since the sailor Charles J. Moore discovered a huge rubbish dump floating in the ocean between Hawaii and California. A mass of plastic packaging, bottles, lids and countless tons of unidentified waste. The area was named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its growth has been monitored apprehensively ever since. New debris accumulates rapidly, carried there on the North Equatorial Current.

The huge rubbish dump was found drifting in the oceans.

It is fair to say I loved this it was inspiring and also an insightful book and also sounds a warning shot of how waste is everywhere even in some of the most remote places he visits he is shocked to see waste there. But each piece of waste in itself is a story of where it came from. Then how it could have ended up there. Even how discarded waste at times has changed nature itself over time. The concept of the book is very entertaining and also hits topping home it combines nature but also the great environmental questions facing the world. Do you have a favourite nature book that combines the natural world but also alongside the current environmental situation? It shows you how much we have to go to sustainable resources and move away from Plastic which is happening but it needs to quicken. As one of the first books to match my two reading styles books in translation and Nature writing this was a great book and shows we should try and get more nature writing from around the world. I will be trying to get some more books from around the world. That deal with nature when I see them around.

Winstons score – A this is an insightful book into the current situation of plastic waste and its effect the natural world.

 

The Instant by Amy Liptrot

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The Instant by Amy Liptrot

Nature memoir

Source – Library

I am back to the Wainwright longlist and this is a book from a writer that had won the Wainwright prize a number of years ago for her book The Outrun (which I wish I had read first as this book follows on from that book) her first book The outrun covered the time she had to get out of London and the drink and drugs world she was living in and return to her native Orkney back to the sheep farm where she had grown up on as she tries to rebuild her life. This book follows on after that time and feeling better and drink free she leaves the UK to head to Germany, to live in Berlin for a year.

The internet is hectic and I go to the moon to relax, opening a new browser tabs for the moon’s wikipedia page and google maps of its surface. I follow new lunar developments from NASA. I learn that the moon was probably once part of the earth, sheared off by an asteroid. B who moved from Scotland to Tasmania, tells me that there is a different moon in the southern hemisphere: it waxes and wanes in the opposite direction. I learn that the moon is slowing down the earth’s rotation. The moon is holding on to us.

I grew more aware of the moon and, in particular, its effect on the tides when I was back home on the island. Low tide at the new moon is the time to dig for shellfish called spots on the beach, and after a full moon is the time to go looking for things washed up – ike driftwood and treasure – at the high-water line.

The moon is the way we follow the year as each chapter is called after the name of the full moon for that time of year.

This is a woman breaking free after a rough time and starting fresh in a big city and Berlin. As she wants to be inspired, find something she is missing (love or sex hard to tell or both !) alongside this it is clear she has grown in the country as some tat has partly spent time in my youth in the countryside you learn to see so much more about the world around us the changing seasons. as she starts to settle into life in Berlin in as she mentions what the Germans call a wandering year, she has the ability to be a digital nomad to live in Berlin and talk about seeing birds of prey trying top see a racoon ( this reminded me of a German novel I read about a lone wolf wandering through ice-cold Berlin. But there is a sense of being alone in a crown at times is Berlin just another Orkney? routines fill her day. Then she meets and falls for a man they camp with and grow close to him. But then there is a sudden change of heart on his part which sees her go back to her phone to the lunar cycle. we see Amy try and grow and live in a new city in a new country.

The racoons have become a symbol of this area of Plucky, scrappy Kreuzberg. The big  1 May party in the courtyard of our apartment block has racoon hand stamps. The racoons are known for resilience and adaptability that I hope to emulate.

I still don’t know if it was a racoon I heard from my bed that night but I know they are out there on the rooftops, moving silently and unknown above the reptiles and graffiti. I know we make rubbish to feed colonies, to build another city from, to shelter a species.

Racoon is a recurring theme in the book.

This was a surprise for me as I hadn’t read a book by Amy before I was aware of her just from seeing her earlier book in the bookshop. I like memoirs and I connected with Amy and her year in Germany as I had in my early 20s spent in Germany I lived for two years near the dutch border with a German girl. I connected with how it feels to be alone in a crowd but also that love and zest for life you can get in Germany a country where arts and being artsy or even in love with nature isn’t strange. I loved the way she used the moon’s cycle to navigate that year of lows and highs she also showed how love can be so passionate like a firework at times fly high than a bang. This was her rocket ride and it didn’t get a moon landing the voyage was good but it had to come back to earth. alongside this is a country girl’s eye to the world around her the birds the creatures she hears about like the racoons I never saw a racoon myself but saw so much over my years there that I couldn’t see here. Have you a favourite Memoir of nature?

Winston’s score – +B a solid memoir of a year in Germany brought back memories of my own youth which is always fun.

 

12 Birds to save your life by Charlie Corbett

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12 Birds to save your life by Charlie Corbett

British Nature writing

Source – Library book

I take another step along the path of the Wainwright longlist books. It is strange I picked a book last month of my Trio of books that I had enjoyed was a memoir about grief this is another book around Grief. Charlie Corbett is a writer and a farmer that has spent his time between the Wessex Downs and Isle of Mull( you couldn’t get two places further apart in the Uk.he lives with his wife on the downs with his sons and a field full of skylarks which is one of the 12 birds of the book where he uses his love of birds and mixes into a memoir of Birds and the death and how his family coped when their Mother died and how birds have been viewed through time and he mixes them up this is his life in a hard time.

Peewits (otherwise known as lapwings or green plovers) are, in fact, a bird of the coast – a wader – but they breed up on hills during the spring and summer. And if you scan the sky in February, you might see great flocks of peewits circling up above looking for suitable places to nest. I almost drove off the side of the motorway when I saw such a sight not that long ago (once you develop a love for birds, almost crashing cars will become a common occurrence, I’m afraid)

I used to see these on a drive between towns growing up a bird we see a lot less of these days.

The book uses twelve birds native to the UK, which are common bar two of them which are harder to see the sections combine Charlie’s family life at what is one of the hardest times in people’s lives and that is the loss of a parent the effect on the wider family and how the sight of the birds and connections about myths and legends around the birds and how they have seen them over time. He also has a comic touch to describe some birds and their wider family-like calling a Jackdaw like the Danny deviate of the crow world. Then at the end of each section a guide to how to see each bird and how common they are and also it highlights how some birds over time have drastically declined those so common and still common mare getting less so like the little sparrow. It shows how we have to feed and make sure our gardens make birds welcome.

And if Danny DeVito had an extrovert cousin who liked to dress in Paris clothes, then that would be the Jay. The Jay is another characterful member of the Corvid clan. Though instead of the usual sombre black ensemble, the Jay sports a pink suit, bright white shirt with dazzling electric blue wingtips and a snappy black moustache under the beak. You’ll certainly hear a jay before you see one(its Latin name is Garrulous Glandarius). If you are walking through woodland, your ears will be assaulted by a shattering shriek, just as you remark to your walking companion, ” What the hell was that bloody awful noise?”, you’ll see this pinky-blue-white blur fly past with a kind of lazy undulation lollo. Yet despite its shouty call and garish costumes, the jay is, in fact, really rather a shy creature.It lives in woodland and really ventures out.

I loved this description of a jay in the section about Magpies.

I loved this as many of you know I love books that connect objects to things to memories it has always been something that has driven me as a reward this was one of the books that really jumped out at me of the Wainwright longlist. especially as I have always had a love of birds but also the myths and legends around birds which is something I have always loved. I often look for a robin when a bird is meant to be the soul visiting you at my mum’s grave site. They are one of the birds Charlie talks about. Then he talks about Kingfisher a bird I had on my wall as a kid one of the birds I love to see as you only ever see a brilliant blue flash as they so often disappear so quickly. He also has anBarn Owl which made me think of My work Owl there is a Tawny owl I have seen a few times it sites of a post at the back of work and I see it there and think I have seen a couple of things it has killed on the gardens at work. I think it is great as the first time I saw it a patient showed it me it made their day, especially showing me. Have you a favourite book that deals with Grief and its effect on a family?

Winstons score – B solid book around birds and grief and how they enter our lives their but sometimes we notice them more.

Goshawk Summer by James Aldred

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Goshawk Summer by James Alfred

English Nature writing

Source – Personal copy

I decide to have this break and read some Nature writing which happened to be exactly the same time as we got the Wainwright Nature writing longlist for 2022. So I then decided to get all the books which I was so lucky to have found most of them on the Library system so Had to order to collect most of them as they are coming from all over Derbyshire. I am going today ( well actually yesterday !! as I wrote this yesterday) to pick up the first lot of books. But the two books I couldn’t get I ordered and they arrived before the weekend so I managed to squeeze in this book over the weekend James Aldred is an Award-winning wildlife documentary maker. He had just finished one project in Africa when he was hired to film some Goshawks in the New forest this is around the time of the first lockdowns in the Uk and he is able to go to the forest every day and to film the Goshawks during a summer that is like no other that has been for many a year and maybe won’t happen again. SO we see his observations of the forest and Goshawks.

Friday 10 April

The country’s been in lockdown for two weeks. I take our three boys into the empty landscape of the valley opposite for some decompression. They’ve been bouncing off the walls at home and it’s good to feel the stride of open ground. They bring their bows and shoot arrows high into the sky above the wide rhyme-locked levels. It’s a good way to let off steam for an hour or so. crossing one of the many small bridges. I glance down to see the five-toed pads of a dog otter imprinted in the soft mud.

I loved as he takes the kids out which many parents did he still sees the nature around him.

He has just returned to the Uk as we see Lockdown is happening and has just been given the job to sit in a Hide to film over the summer. In the New forest. We see as he travels back and forth to film in a world that is now quiet and how strange it is with nothing around that is usually the traffic on the roads, Planes in the sky all have vanished overnight and a new world of silence and quiet. As he settles deep in the forest in his Hide says how much he likes being in a hide hidden and watching whatever he is there to film. He grew up in the New Forest and is amazed when he sees the car parks fill as everyone went back into nature as he heads into the hide and watches this Family of Goshawks sit on the Eggs and then as the chick grows(there is an insight into how they choose which chick lives) we see the environment the bio system of the world of the Goshawks the world of the forest the squirrels which is the main diet of the Goshawks, other birds he sees he compares the other Raptures and places The Goshawks alongside them and how it all interconnects. All this is against the backdrop of the Pandemic and lockdown. I hope to capture the film he made of this Goshawk pair and the New forest in this time which is a time we may never see again.

Friday 8 may

A dry start. The forest leaves hang with mist, but the sky is clear and the 4 a.m. journey to goshawks is sublime. The full moon hangs huge and heavy above dark spires of conifer- a Spielberg backdrop in need of a flying silhouette. The road through Whitemoor glade is a bright bridge of silver and I turn of my lights to follow, rolling slowly forward as the trees eventually rise up to swallow the moon. As I re-enter the darkness a tawny owl is perched on a sign next to the road. It ignores me and remains poised with head tilted forward, listening to something in the leaf litter. I switch off the engine in their hope of watching it hunt, but it seems to notice me for the first time and flies off into the shadows.

his early morning walk to the hide deep in the woods.

I do wonder if in years to come we will get a series of books that will be described as Covoid lit or lockdown Lit. This time saw the best and worst of people but also as we see in James’s eyes it gave nature a small window away from the chaos of the world and  Pollution lessen as the cars on the road stop, I remember the driving to work myself in this time when some days I wouldn’t see a single car and also it was amazing hearing and see birds more than before. He captures this Goshawk couple in an extraordinary time this is a story of them but also has the reflections of the year which for James himself was a sad year With the loss of his father. I enjoyed the insight into a bird I haven’t seen it made me want to see a Goshawk at some point. Do you think there will be a section around ovoid and Lockdown in years to come or is it too early to tell? This was the first book I have read from this year’s Wainwright nature writing longlist.

Winston’s score – B a man in the woods captures a year like no other.

The Military Orchid by Joceyln Brooke

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The Military Orchid by Jocelyn Brooke

English Nature writing

Source – personal copy

Well, I read Copsford last week and was bowled over by it and love the actual book itself it was a nicely presented work from the publisher Little Toller which until I brought that book I had never heard of so I went and had a look at there backlist of Nature writing classics and I choose two more to read and this is the first of those two books I selected Orchid Military which is the first of a trilogy by the English Writer Jocelyn  Brooke He was one of those old English characters he was in the military and had run away as a kid and then dropped out of Oxford before he joined the military in the medieval core this is also where he started to write and also discover the Orchid of the title of the book and also sent him what would be a google rabbit hole but then was discovering book after book and a journey of finding Orchids and the hunt for that one mystery Orchid.

Poor colonel Mackenzies! His book was not the best of introductions to its subject. Yet he was a true ochidomane, and I salute him across the years. I imagine him living in comfortable retirement in Surrey, in a red house with a drive and spiky gates, among pine trees; pottering on the downs above Betchworth and Shere but not often venturing further afield. Probably he did possess a copy of Bentham and Hooker, but he could have seldom have looked at it. It is a pleasing thought that another retired officer, colonel Godfrey, has written the standard Monograph on the British Orchidaceae (He also lives in Surrey)

His intro was the Colonel’s book on Orchids

The book opens as we see via a Mr Bundock how the young Jocelyn was drawn into Orchid and the first orchid he discovered was the Lizard Orchid this is the time he got one of the first of many books about the Orchids of Britain this was the colonel Mackenzie Orchids of Britain that was an example of a book that was written by the amateur nature writer. . But this book is where he discovers the Military Orchid ( `orchis Militaris). Which is the one orchid we see him hunting to discover if this very rare orchid is even confirmed as the book unwinds we Follow Jocelyn in the English countryside where we meet a cast of characters that are from a bygone age where the countryside is a mixture of snobs and those old country figures ( this remind me of living in Northumberland in my teens and the characters I used to pick up for my job in a day centre which had a number of character that reminds me of those that Jocelyn crossed. He also spends time abroad in his army career this is a mix of his military life and his growing love of Nature and Orchids as he gets more and more Orchid. books and he tells us about the writers on the whole a collection of amateurs like himself. We see if Evers gets to find this orchid and if it is even real.

Les seuls Vrais Paraadis, said Proust, sont les paradis qu’on la perdus: and conversely, the only genuine infernos, perhaps, are those which are yet to come. After the post-Munch period, with its atmosphere of slowly gathering crisis, the outbreak of war itself was like a sudden Holiday, bringing a sense of release, almost of relief: the kind of relief which an invalid feels when a definite disease has declared itself, replacing the vague, indefinable mails by a set of recognisable physical symptoms

I love this Proust quote(a little jealous I never got past the first books of Proust)

This was just what I need it is one of those books that is written by someone with a passion for their subject which for Brooke is Orchids alongside his growing up and witnessing Both wars and the inter war years and his Military career and home life. He mixes a comical view of the time of the world around him. Add to this is the wonderful Orchid pictures we get that illustrate a lot of the plants that we have read about. This is a mix of styles Memoir, Satire and military history during and after world wars it is also a quest work his ask is the Military Orchid you can see as the years go by and he hasn’t seen this rarely record Orchid does it even exist. It has a bit of Waugh, a bit of Edith Holden and added to that is his Quest it is a sort of Holy grail search for his beloved Orchid.He wrote a number of other books after this book, I will be looking out for the other two books in this collection of the collected trilogy as the other two books are meant to be as good as this one is. Have you read any books by Brooke? do you like memoirs that combine a love of Nature?

 

Winstons score – A two wars and the inter war years are a hunt for a mythical Orchid. Sees a man grow and discover a passion.

Copsford by Walter J. C. Murray

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Copsford by Walter J. C. Murray

British Nature writing

Source – personal copy

I have decided a couple of years ago that every time I go and put flowers and visit where we scattered my mum’s ash which is about an hours drive from where I live in Derbyshire .I would by some nature writing my Mom and my Granddad who are also scattered on the same site in Macclesfield in Cheshire with were great nature lovers my granddad had a love of birds and birdwatching he paid for my old YOC membership growing up (the youth section of the (RSPB). So there is a mid-size Waterstones there which is slightly big than the one we have here so I went to the nature section and had a look round and actually had another book in my hand when this one caught my eye with its Black white cover which by the sheer tone of the photo you could tell it was an old print. The book was written by Walter Murray he was from Sussex and had been living in London in a third-floor flat when he decided he want to do a Thoreau (as in Walden) and he decide to return to Sussex and rent a heap the hep on the cover a cottage called cops ford and try and make a living of the land grow and drying herbs and making a simpler life.He had a lifelong love of nature and took photos of Nature the photos in this book are from the original book when it came out in 1948( The Copsford year was in the 20s though)

“No one ain’t lived in Copsford for more ‘an twenty year’ he protested “Its do be out of repair like’

“You’m best go an’ ; ave a look around first,’ he suggested. Then returning to the familiar rut, ‘Ice going ‘ ploughin’ in the ten-acre.’

He readjusted his hat and began to harness his two horses. He was happy again, so I set off across the field to inspect Copsford, this cottage “sech a mile from nowhere” where no one wanted to live.

He goes to look at cops ford after the farmer warns how it is derelict.

I am drawn to the idea of living away from it all one of the things I want to do in the future is go back to Northumberland and live in a small village. So the book opens when he decides to leave his third floor flat and his life in London and with his Dog floss his sheepdog. The farmer iS taken back when he asks if he can take on Copsford the cottage had been empty for decades and was broken down as you can see ion the cover also it is full of rats. So the opening few chapters we see him first trying to get at least one room liveable as he then tries to get rid of the rats from the property all this as he is having to fetch water and live by candlelight as he also reconnects with his childhood sweetheart a music teacher, this is about the time in the mid-twenties when Murray became a teacher and eventually a headmaster at his own school. What fools is his upon and downs as he Lears to live on the land and also at the end chapter sees him comparing what he made to how he lived in London to the money earned for rent and living costs in Copsford.

If the herb is taken too late from the drying-room, and this quite frequently happens when a spell of dry weather suddenly succeeds a long damp, blowdrying period, the plant is so brittle that it crumbles to dust. The rosette of pale green leaves of cleavers is so slight that there is always some loss of herb at the bagging-up time, but that is better than mould. Other herbs, if allowed to become to dry, just cannot be handled; they smash and crumble and fall away into useless fragments, Others again – a few – one never seems to be able to dry enough; they always feel moist or oily to the touch, no matter how many days they hang on the line

He learns how to dry the herbs he is wanting to harvest dry and sell

 

 

I said in the intro I called this a Thoreau he did similar when he went to live next to Walden lake it was a way to escape the pressure of the present and this is similar he just wants to capture the countryside and live on the land with his dog Floss and he does what he does is also start to notice the seasons and the world around him as he struggles to collect and work at his plan to gather and forage for Herbs to dry and sell. Then there is also the budding romance between him and his childhood sweetheart who lives near Copsford. The cottage itself becomes a character in the book, even more, when he decides to stay in the winter as he said it was the last gift it gave him. This book is timely there seems to be a movement toward a simple life post-Lockdown people have reconnected with nature and want a simpler life it’s strange that the Similar events in the 70s with strikes and cost of living crisis lead to the likes of the Good Life. I think we all love a bit of the countryside I know I love the mix of that and going to the city or a large town. This was republished just before the lockdown and maybe should be read if you like a year of nature-type books or want to see how the simpler life was never to simple even 100 years ago. Maybe it is the prototype Cottagecore book if you want to be present and live in the moment and be sustainable this is the book for you. Also, it has his wonderfully evocative pictures to bring to life the text and the year he spent there. Have you a favourite back-to-nature book?

Winstons score – +A just loved slipping into his year in copsford.

 

Vesper flights by Helen Macdonald

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Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

Nature writing

Source – Personal copy

I said to myself at the start of this year I need to add a couple of non-fiction books here and there which is something in all the time I have blogged has been thin on the ground I always see other Bloggers and Vloggers mention different non-fiction books and think I should read some of the books they have mentioned and I have always been a fan of nature writing but had only reviewed one book a year in the woods in my time blogging I had read a couple of other books A roger Deakin being one but not reviewed any of them anyway the second book from Helen Macdonald I brought last year when we visited were we scattered my mum’s ashes in Cheshire (which is an odd connection given the cover could be Jodrell Bank the radio telescope that dominates The area of Cheshire I grew up so the Linocut cover caught my eye). So I brought it last summer and the other memory of that day was a squirrel that was so tame it stood a mere couple of feet away as I place some flowers near when we scattered my mum’s ashes.

This creature was not what I expected, despite its slap of familiarity. It had the forward-meancing shoulder of a Baboon and the brute strtength and black hide of a bear. But it was not really anything like a bear, and what surprised me most of all was that it was nothing like a pig. As the beast trotted up to us, a miracle pf muscle and bristle and heft, I turned to the boy, and said, surprised, “It’s nothing like a pig!” With great satisfactionhe grinned and sad “No they’re really not.”

The meeting of a wild boar in the woods when it was reintroduced to the UK

 

I was immediately grabbed by her writing when Helen Macdonald talked of this collection as being like a Wunderkammern ( a box of curiosities ) this collection of Nature writing. that we get insight into how she first wanted to be a naturist the opening story talks of Nest and egg collection which Naturists used to do in the past but now seems so out date to the modern Naturist. I was reminded of Gald Durrel and his Amateur Naturalist series and book I loved when I was younger the way he collect things like Nest and eggs. Then we see how the reintroduction of Wild Boars makes walking in the wood different these days !! ( this also remind me of the film Beast of the southern wilds which had a recurring motif of an ancient giant Boar running ). An essay that touched me was her connection with a boy that Autism a touching tale of when they met. Then a tale of old Field guides which mention an old guide written about seeing birds through your opera glasses Elsewhere we see the effects of building on birds and An essay about Ants. Hares are the subject of another essay I was reminded of Moring in  Northumberland where I see the Rabbits and hares out in force near Alnwick Castle in the fields around as I walked my first dog.

The process of indentifying aniumals in this way has a fascinating history, for field guides have closely tracked changes in the ways we interact with nature. Untilthe earlyyear of the twentieth century, bird guides, for example, mostly came in two kinds. Some moralised, anthropomphic life hiostories, like Florence merra’s 1889 Birds through an opera-glass, which describes the bluebirdas having a “model temper” while the catbird possessed a “lazy self indulgence”. “If he were a man,” she wrote of the latter “you feel confident that he would sit in short sleeves at home and go oin the street wthout a collar.” The other kind was the technical volume for ornithological collectors.

Old field guide this made me smile with the description of  the old guide looking through Opera glasses.

I think you can guess from my description how much I loved this book I love books that make you think of your own experiences and I have always loved Nature I used to love walking in the Northumberland countryside and now these days in the Peaks I think it was Durrell’s book that opens my eyes and that is the beauty of a book like this is that it reminds you to appreciate the world around us and it also reminds us how fragile the world around is us is and how much effect we can have on the world around us. If you like nature writing I would say pick this up it left me wanting to read more from Helen Macdonald and also wanting to go out and observe the world around us again afresh. Have any of you read her Memoir H is for Hawk?

Winstons score – +A, A gem and uplifting read for a dull January day !!

A year in the woods by Colin Elford

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A year in the woods

Notes –

Colin is a forest ranger working for the forestry commission in Dorset ,His neighbour is angling journalist who suggest he publish this book from his notes made over a year working in his job .

The book –

We start of in January with Colin going round the woods with his two dogs checking that everything is ok for the year ahead .We learn what his job entails the control of the deer with in the land making sure the wood is in tip-top condition .We she him training a German to stalk a deer although he doesn’t like him that much he is touch by the farewell and the gratitude of the skills he has passed on to this guy .There are funny accounts like the time he has rushed out to help to rutting deers that have got there antlers stuck together .Now a note of caution there is hunting of animals described in this book .

It’s early and in the dark I stagger to find the door handle to the kitchen .A blast of wind and rain throws itself at the kitchen window and stare into the darkness ,jugding the opposition .

outside i point to the open door of my truck and both dogs are quavering in anticipation ,waiting for my command .I say the word -up ……………

the opening lines of the book .

My view –

I have always loved nature books from notes from walnut tree farm to Walden ,Colin drags you in to the Dorset woods and a year of the land changing around him the coming and going of nature wonderfully descriptive and insightful with the real sense of Colin’s love of his job and the land he is working in .A true gem for any nature lover .

book booty from nottingham

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On friday i went to an exhibition at Nottingham contemporary gallery ,this gave me chance to pop in to the large waterstones they have there and get some books this is what i got –

  • how to live by Sarah Bakewell – part biography /part philosophy Sarah’s book is about the 16th century french noble man and writer Michel De Montaigne who wrote numerous essays on a wide range of  subjects .I got heads upon this via rob at robaround books .
  • desert by J M G Le Clezio -The french writer was little known in the uk before his noble win two years ago this is a new translation of what is his most widely acclaimed and respected novel ,two intertwined stories one about tribal uprising the other set in a shanty town this is meant to be a tough read .
  • the year of the hare by Arto Pasilinna – This is highly regard in his native finland and france ,the story follows a journalist as he drops out of society to follow a hare he injured with a car into the wilds of Finland .
  • The conservationist by Nadine Gordimer – i got this at local Oxfam ,it’s a booker winner and one i ve want for quite a while .it follows Mering as his life falls apart a bit like the south africa around him .
  • A year in the woods – Colin Elford -This was my birthday gift from my darling wife and was a book i really wanted i love good nature writing and have want this since it was mention in a radio programme a start of the year ,it follows Colin a forest ranger for a yearn the ebb and follow of the unwinding seasons the wildlife and plants he sees .