Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 156
A Nature Book Reader
harder. However, after much
deliberation and many pots
of contemplative tea I have
now whittled my selection of
country books down to just
the required three, though
tomorrow I’ll probably feel
differently about them. They
are The Living Landscape by
Fraser Harrison, Season Songs
by Ted Hughes and
The Story of my Heart
by Richard Jefferies.
Fraser Harrison published
‘Living Landscape’ in 1986
and the book kept me sane
through a very difficult
separation from a beloved
cottage in a Hampshire wood.
I had been living amongst
the trees for eight years, but I
had to leave because I wanted
to live closer to the river that
was then obsessing me. The
book, subtitled, The Seasons
of a Suffolk Village, described
a landscape very different
from the one I was familiar
with, closer in character to
the more open countryside I
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was moving to. It made the
transition much easier and I
was so inspired by the author’s
wonderful relationship with
his surroundings that, for
months, I spent more time
wandering through the
downland of my new home
than fishing the river.
Season Songs was
published in 1976. A collection
of poems written during a year
at Court Green, Devon, it was
originally intended as a book
for ‘young people,’ but it grew
up in the process of writing
and I think it contains some of
the most perfect descriptions
of the natural world I have
ever read. Ted Hughes was a
good sharp-eyed countryman
and it was our good fortune
that he was also a great poet.
One of my favourite poems in
the book, The Warm and the
Cold, is the last and it opens
with this chilly lovely stanza:
‘Freezing dusk is closing /
Like a slow trap of steel / On
trees and roads and hills and
