Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 110
A Nature Book Reader
DAN RICHARDS
Dan Richards is the author ‘Holloway’, ‘The Beechwood Airship Interviews’,
‘Climbing Days’ and most recently ‘Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the
Earth’, published by Canongate.
The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald
Sebald was unknown to
me when I arrived to study
in Norfolk. By the time I
perhaps we passed each
other in the grey corridors
of UEA – near missing, our
paths over lapping but never
converging.
This book is best a found
thing – a book of lost images
or spidery notes in a wiry
hand, a thing to be poured
over and decoded – a map
without a key or cross.
I found my copy in a
blanket box whilst looking
for something else.
Nothing else I have read
captures the depth and loss
of the broads; crawling into
the landscape on a listless,
wheezing train, walking out
– the dot of the man getting
smaller and smaller until he
is swallowed by the landscape
110
and only the voice remains.
Rothko and Ballard near
Benacre Broad.
I read it in one sitting in
a Norwich student kitchen,
the book playing out until,
suddenly, the end.
I blinked and peered
about me to see where I was.
It was dark outside.
Further Reading
The Wheelwright’s
Shop by George Sturt
The Worm Forgives
the Plough
by John Stewart Collis
