Nature's Lens
Last week's blog, which asked you to complete a short survey about the things you'd like me to write about, turned up some interesting results. Specifically, you'd most like me to write about outdoor adventure, nature & wildlife, and bushcraft.
I was quick to spot a correlation, in that these categories are the ones that contain the fewest blogs on my website. Seems that I've not been making my blogs as interesting as they could be? You also asked if I could write about local travel (appreciating the natural history and cultural heritage of what's close to home), rural crafts, and campfire cooking: three new subjects for my blogs, and things that interest me greatly.
It proves the value of feedback, as I can now focus my writing on that which most interests you. It also highlights how my audience has changed over the past seven years since I launched the Fennel's Priory website.
While I'll still be keeping you updated of book launches and events, I'll be blogging more about 'what's out there' as the seasons change – much like I did in my countryside diary for William Powell several years ago.
The good news, then, is that you can expect plenty of outdoor adventure and nature writing from me. I'll be hiking, camping, fishing, foraging and doing my best to share the ways in which our surroundings can inspire and provide for us.
The first of these blogs, featured below, is entitled Nature's Lens. It talks about the ways in which we can view and engage with the wild world.
Nature's Lens - Up Close and Personal
Let's start at the beginning, with the big observation: that, in the UK at least, there's not much left that's truly wild. Most of our landscape, flora and fauna, has been affected, shaped, influenced or impacted by us. It's 3,000 years since our ancestors cleared the forest that once covered our island, and began farming their food rather than hunting and foraging for it. We're a smart species; we learned very quickly to destroy one thing so that another could be corralled for our benefit.
But that doesn't mean that 'wild' doesn't exist, or can't be found.
Ours is a world of extremes
The more we opt for an indoor-based convenience lifestyle, huddling in front of a TV or computer screen, tightly packed into our towns and cities, the more we’re allowing nature the freedom to do her thing. So the more time we spend indoors, the more we’re doing her a favour. But we’re the one’s in charge. We can’t allow the irony that we’re the ones becoming corralled and domesticated.
Scared of the dark?
The outdoors, to us, becomes more ‘wild’ when we consider our ‘protected’ indoor existence. Dare I say, it becomes unknown and scary to some. All those sharp toothed, spindly legged, or slimy skinned beasties prowling around wanting to startle or eat us. How brave one must be to venture into this terrifyingly strange, cold, wet, quiet and dirty world?
Let the sun shine a little on that which you don’t know
It’s not that scary out there. There’s more chance of us getting injured in a crowd of people than there is when we’re alone in the wild. In fact, the more we get to know the outdoors, the more it seems like home.
Get out there. It’s where we belong. Being part of nature
Modern Man is but a toddling infant on this ancient planet. Comparatively speaking, we’re little more than apes wielding the club of our making. There’s still a lot within us that’s connected to our cave-dwelling, tree swinging, nature worshipping past. We are children of the woods, whether we acknowledge it or not. Our place is ‘out there’ where we belong.
But there’s not much of it left
A farm field might appear wild to some, but it’s not. To find wild things you have to focus your gaze a little closer on the small things in those out of way places. This could be a spider’s web in a garden shed, or an eagle nesting in an inaccessible ravine; nature is to be found anywhere, in the ‘in between’ and ‘left alone’ places. We just need to look.
There’s beauty in the small
Nature’s Lens is not simply a magnifying glass that enables us to see things close up; it reveals things we didn’t know existed, or things about them of which we weren’t aware. It’s a lens though which we learn. We learn about the minutiae of life and, if we tilt the glass, we catch a reflection of ourselves. We’re there, completing the picture, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Though it can also be big
Nature discovery is in the detail, lifting up leaves and stones to make our discoveries. But it also has a macro scale - with the spectacle of sunrises and sunsets, views from mountaintops and across oceans, and the timeless wonder of a starlit sky. Looking 'up and around' can often be as rewarding as looking at what exists beneath our feet. Nature is far bigger than us. You only have to sit in mature deciduous woodland to realise the grandeur – and interconnected lives – of nature.
“Don’t touch, don’t pick, just poke it with a stick?”
Last year, when my family and I relocated to North Wales, I moved my daughter from one school to another. The old one was a highly reputed establishment that produced excellent exam results. But they had a rule for the children that bothered me.
Whenever they were outside, the children had to follow the instruction of “Don’t touch, don’t pick, just poke it with a stick”. Whilst this was obviously shared to prevent them from getting poisoned or injured, it bothered me when I saw how fearful Little Lady had become of blackberries. She’d eaten them with me ever since she was a baby, but had become brainwashed into thinking they were dangerous. So, after a change of school and a long ‘purple tonged’ walk along the hedgerow, she was back being my nature-loving and blackberry munching daughter. It goes to show how knowledge is more fulfilling – and life giving – than ignorance.
Know it, don’t hide from it
Being comfortable, familiar, appreciative, and trusting of wild things comes through making the time and effort to study them. Understanding nature, be it mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, plants, insects or even just the ecology of our soil or the weather systems and movement of our moon and plant that shapes our daily routines, tides and seasons; knowing 'what, why and how' is the lens that reveals the wonder of our natural world. It weighs nothing, so always carry it.
If you like this blog, then you might like Fennel's book The Quiet Fields and The Contented Countryman podcast. Please also subscribe to Fennel on Friday. You'll receive a blog, video or podcast sent direct to your email inbox in time for the weekend.