Being Outside More

When even Thought for the Day on Radio 4 starts gloomily quoting from Revelations, refusing to offer glib words of comfort, you know something is off kilter in the world. Wild fires are raging in the US, in continental Europe, in Scotland. Maybe at this point it’s more comfortable to be a denier, to be able to see those images and hold fast to your belief that it’s ‘just weather’, that there’s no reason to change anything we’re doing. Last year I took a short course on nature writing with my local university. It was one of the sparks that led to this blog. Nature writing has maybe a comforting image, a close look at the beauty of the natural world, soaking up all that awe and wonder. But a person can’t spend time closely observing and trying to represent nature’s beauty without running headlong into the effects of the climate crisis. I hear it in my dad’s voice on the phone as we swap gardening notes, he is mourning for his parched garden, his unspoken worry about the world his grandch...

No time to write yesterday as I was travelling back from a weekend at Electromagnetic Field, described on their website as "a non-profit camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things". This is the fourth time I have been with my family and my head is full of conversations and experiences. Very fun but very intense, and then I ran straight into preparing for a job interview this afternoon. To free up space for camping equipment in our small family car, my son and I travelled separately by train. In a car the journey takes about an hour, by train it's at least twice that. So I found myself on an unfamiliar route, sleepily staring out at a heatwaved scene and jotting down notes on my phone. Here's the result: Slow train An unfamiliar landscape The Midlands are hinterlands  Sun roasted fields, scrambling sprays of brambles line the track Already black with berries, unsettlingly early A level crossing Water stressed trees already brown...

Living through a heatwave depends on your situation in life, to use a hackneyed analogy we’re all in the same storm, but we’re not all in the same boat. Last Thursday I cycled over to the leafy side of Bristol early in the morning to work a shift at Forest School. I worked until 3pm, deep in the shade of mature trees, feeling so grateful that I wasn’t in an overheated classroom, office, or even my own stuffy house. Leaving the embrace of the branches was a wrench, strapping the chunk of expanded polystyrene that is my cycle helmet onto my head felt like a punishment. I rode down towards the city centre along stifling streets, slaloming between glistening patches of melted tar, the smell of it in my nostrils. I sweltered and simmered resentfully at the thought of air-conditioned cars. A hot breeze met me, at times it took my breath away. I was experiencing the Urban Heating Effect in full force, and I felt like a chapatti in a pan. Urban Heating describes how cities can be significantly...

I think I like this place best at the beginnings and the ends of the day, golden light streaming through the orchard and stretching our shadows. When I woke up earlier at 5am and staggered sleepily through the damp grass to the compost toilet, tucked neatly away in a repurposed old garden shed, there were still pink streaks of dawn in the east. Turning back I saw a bright white half moon still hanging in the vaguest memory of the night sky. It is my last morning of a long weekend in Cornwall with my teenage daughter V, a much anticipated post-exam treat, a pause from all of the everything that awaits us back home. I have been visiting this part of south Cornwall on and off for over twenty years, and there is something immensely soothing about coming back to the same place and walking the same footpaths. The landscape doesn’t change, but of course humans do. The choice to keep returning was partly pragmatic, I was looking for somewhere by the sea to bring my children that was accessible...