nature writing
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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
Cowslipping, Part II. Before the rain, we took a lesson in walking underwater, without getting wet. It is entirely possible to drown in the sensory celebration of a bluebell wood, even as they are almost over: the mist-blue haze floating at calf-height, lapping the trees; the sticky sappiness, the honey scent, the squeak and tangled […]
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Nature Notes
Lamplight from the Oak’s Cavern. It was the glow emanating from within the Horse Field Oak that made me stop and reappraise it. A lamplight glow that kept catching my eye as I worked; the sort of glow you might expect on opening a treasure chest, hauled from the deep. This much-loved tree stands in […]
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Nature Notes
Wild Writing. Three lovely women join me for a Wild Writing Workshop at BBOWT’s Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre. We discuss ‘the new nature writing’, its ancient roots and tradition; its resurgence and the reasons (and need) for it. And we try to define something that, in its wild essence, defies catagorisation. But we come up […]
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Nature Notes
Presentiment of a Red Sun. Part I. The wood is under a sepia spell. Everything tinged, foxed and coloured like an old map of itself. Mid-October, yet warm enough for July. The late harvest moon was spectacular when it rose, coloured like a honeysuckle bloom off the horizon. The atmosphere in the wood is strange. […]
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Nature Notes
Seams, ridges, holes, pellets. In the park by the footpath, two big old ash trees are felled. They dropped branches in storms and sometimes, on still, benign days. I inspect their prone forms, paying my respects, investigating a canopy I wouldn’t normally have access to. Their deep grooved trunks and branches supported lichens and insects, […]
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Nature Notes
Hotchi Witchi. An Apology. Near-dark, and I am trying to point out a small, still hedgehog under a hedge by the Scout hut to my son. He only sees it when it trots off, a conker on fast little legs. He is astonished I spotted it. But I have a special eye for hedgehogs. And […]