Somewhere Nowhere Blog
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Showing articles tagged "nature writing"
30/07/2018
Walking, Water, and Elemental Connection
There seems to be a lot of talk about 'nature disconnect' and 'getting back to nature' but the words don't feel right, as we are a part of nature. Immersion in a mountain stream helped me find a new way of thinking about this ...
11/01/2016
Reflections on a year gone and a year to come
To mark the beginning of a new year we thought we'd take a moment to reflect on somewhere-nowhere's year in 2015 and to look forwards. If you've missed any of the highlights (mountains, meadows, wandering poems, mavericks ...), or want to find out more about what's coming up, read on. There are exciting times ahead.
25/09/2015
Still, after London
The wind has dropped and I can hear the scraping of an insect in the grass at my feet. The evening sun is a gold orb in the black mirror of the tarn. Stillness. Here is silence, a commodity that is, as far as I know, impossible to find in the city.
15/06/2015
Way more than fifty shades of green
Our eyes are drawn by the colour: bright gems of pink, purple, blue, yellow. Buttercups, cranesbill, speedwell, campion, clover. It's hard not to focus on them, to marvel at their vibrancy. It's a major delight of this time of year when roadside verges, meadows and woodland floors sing with these flashes of brilliance.But what about the greens?
18/05/2015
Adventure, adrenalin and 'tree time'
The word ‘adventure’ tends to conjure up the idea of risk, challenge, something daring. It has a ring of the intrepid about it, as if it will necessarily involve hazard. To call someone an ‘adventurer’ is to put them in a league beyond the reach of almost all ‘average’ people (just think of Sir Ranulph Feinnes, or Scott of the Antarctic). But there's another way you could look at it.
03/04/2015
Ash-fall
" The ashtree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. It was lopped first. I heard the sound and looking out and seeing it maimed there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more."
Gerard Manley Hopkins
27/02/2015
The Other Borrowdale
Encounter with place is often enriched when there is a purpose – the eye becomes keener, all the senses perk up, and you take in the sense of place with more intensity than if you were just passing through.
So it was today when Rob and I went to the Borrowdale Valley, just north of Kendal, walking into the heart of the valley for the first time. Our purpose was to take a look at a place I’ll be getting to know more intimately during the summer months when it dances with meadow flowers
03/06/2014
It's the Small Things
Four years ago, we collected a pine cone hard as stone. There were no gaps or spaces between the folds of the cone and it sat in my hands heavy as a rock, but unlike a rock, this weight was full of promise. Full of trees.
02/09/2013
Blackberries: A Homage to Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry Picking has been lodged in my mind from around the age of thirteen. When I read it now I can taste and smell blackberries and the quickening breeze bringing Autumn in from the north, I can feel the tingle of stingers on my feet (still bravely wearing sandals) and I can hear the urgent calls of swallows preparing for a long southward journey.
29/04/2013
Back from the wildness – and carrying it with me
Well, that was some week. I am only just back, so this will be only a brief overview. The week was so packed with personal insights, wonderful writing by other women, animated debates about environment, place and wildness, fierce weather, delicious food ... it’s hard to know where to start!
21/04/2013
Changing Seasons, New Beginnings
It comes at a raging rush, and it comes in waves. As I stand on the stony shelf the surge rolls towards my feet every second or two. It is pulsing while it is flowing. A few weeks ago I walked up the pale slabs of this river bed, I knelt beneath ten-foot icicles and peered through ice sheets, hearing only a gentle trickle of water and the echoes of bird song.
07/04/2013
River Stones
I stop beside one pool where the rock has been worn away and an unlikely three-petalled aperture appears between water and sky. Beneath it, the water is golden yellow, reflecting the leafless trees inside this shape, like a church window with burnished stained glass.