Posted inBooks
Rhythms of Nature by Ian Carter
Yesterday I was in the marvellous Etches Collection in Kimmeridge. Along the walls are examples of marine fossils and explanations about what we know about the lives of the animals…
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Pears and heirs
There is a gothic beauty to Gregg’s Pit orchard in early April. Filigree branches, pregnant with buds, are etched against a bruised sky. Perry pear trees tower over their cider…
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Coed Felenrhyd
My first visit to the temperate rainforest of Coed Felenrhyd in North Wales was in early autumn. Entering the ancient site was to walk into a cathedral, a multi-layered, multi-faceted…
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Where Light in Darkness Lies by Veronica della Dora
I love lighthouses, although I'm not sure why is something I could place my finger on but I find something 'otherworldly' about them, representing the edge of our world, standing…
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Finding The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
The Yucatan jungle is on either side of the road as I finish reading Finding the Mother Tree. Throughout my four-hour journey through the Mexican south, I’ve been idly looking…
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A Winter Walk Around St Ives
My eyes lighted on something dark, in the distance, on the beach. Coming closer, I saw it was a dead porpoise. Mouth frozen in a smile, skin radiating a silvery…
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Aurochs and Auks: Essays on Mortality and Extinction by John Burnside
This book is not an easy read. This is probably as it should be, given the subject material – the death of the individuals, species and the planet, and the…
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The Ghost in the Garden by Jude Piesse
In her wonderful book, The Ghost in the Garden: in Search of Darwin’s Lost Garden, author Jude Piesse observes that gardens have the unique distinction of being created by people as…
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Deliverance
For days there had been no signs of human life. Pine forests shrouded in snow and half-frozen lakes glittering in the sun stretched into an unspoilt Canadian wilderness. It was…
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Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes
In Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, he remarks that the permanence of a mountain seems to structure our understanding of the natural world, thereby conditioning the eye…