chalk downland
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An Ecology of Love & Ruin
Welcome to a new iteration of my Nature Notes blog, An Ecology of Love and Ruin. The name comes from a chapter in my first book On Gallows Down and I hope will steer and guide my intention: to write, mostly from home, where I have written for more than twenty years about loving nature […]
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Nature Notes
Fallow Bucks, Chalk Scree. I haven’t been able to put my fieldcraft into action much in recent weeks. But I’m making up for it now. I’m off to the gap on the downs that lies between two blocks of woodland – where there are fallow deer. The high slope falls away steeply with far-reaching views […]
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Nature Notes
Bedstraws and Bee Orchids. I am at my desk when a familiar, fresh and lovely scent – nostalgic almost – assails me. Petrichor! The smell of rain on dry, dusty ground, from the Greek petra for stone and ichor, the golden liquid that runs through the veins of the Immortals. The last, fat raindrops from […]
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Nature Notes
The Long Twilight. The domed hill is shedding chalk rivers of rain. Chains of bubbles slide past either side of the raised camber, as if there were otters beneath the slick, wet surface of this river-road. Yet, after another 12 hour deluge, the late evening is quiet and still. Blackbirds are piping alarms from the […]
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Nature Notes
Digger on the hill. We go out just before sunset on a glorious day where the sky is swimming-pool blue. A warm breeze provokes whitebeam leaves into light. It is not strong, but it is a portent of the weather to come and enough to turn the wind turbine on the far hill, so I […]