Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 4
A Nature Book Reader
DARRAN ANDERSON
Darran Anderson is the author of Inventory and Imaginary Cities.
Song of the Sky by Guy Murchie
When I was a boy, my
grandfather, a hard-bitten
Donegal trawlerman, would
tell me stories of the sea.
Many of these tales began
with the weather, and how
life and death often depended
on the ability to read the
sky. Years later, hiking in
the mountains, I would
realise his wisdom and my
folly; there are few places
you’d rather not be than
high on a mountainside,
hours from cover, watching
a thunderstorm roll in. Yet it
was not until reading Guy
Murchie’s lost classic Song of
the Sky that it fully dawned
on me that the atmosphere
was an environment itself
rather than a void, and thus
had a vital place in nature
writing.
An aviator in the
age when flight was still
Romantic, Murchie shows
us that the sky is far from
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empty – it has its currents,
ecosystems, histories, faiths
and follies, perils and
mysteries. He is a charming
poetic guide and though
occasionally the book is
of its time, his senses of
daring, wonder and curiosity
counteract its flaws. The
book is also a treasure for
Murchie’s illustrations. The
two maps that bookend
the text – on the winds and
magnetic variations of the
world – are as extraordinary
as any charts in any fantasy
book and yet this is our
world, out there in the clouds
above us.
Song of the Sky is
dedicated, poignantly, ‘to
the memory of our son Jed’.
The first time I lay on the
summer grass, next to my
little boy, staring up at the sky
and talking together, it was a
book I knew I’d always feel
indebted to.
