Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 72
A Nature Book Reader
KAREN LLOYD
Karen is a writer of creative non-fiction and poetry based in Kendal, Cumbria.
The Shining Levels by John Wyatt
Published in the early 1970’s,
at a time when my own
interest in the countryside
was developing, Wyatt’s
book is the story of his life in
South Cumbria. On a teenage
camping trip to a Lakeland
wood, Wyatt’s relationship
with wild environments
began. He left behind work
in a northern city for a hut
in the forest above Lake
Windermere and in this
memoir describes his work
as a forester, the flora and
fauna he encounters and his
relationship with a young
roe-deer fawn. Buck had been
‘found’ by a bunch of lads
and brought to Wyatt as the
person who would know
what to do. The book is his
fervent account of a lived
experience and a deeply rural
existence - decades before
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the term ‘nature writing’ was
thought of.
I had some knowledge of
how arduous the forestry life
was; my brother once worked
in the same forest planting
trees and came home each
night exhausted, dehydrated
and bitten to the point of
mania by horse-flies. This
was the time before whole
forests were managed by one
man and a slope defying,
tree-despatching piece of
machinery. Although we
grew up in a small market
town some twenty minutes
by Ford Corsair from the
forest, our parents were
confirmed suburbanites. It
was therefore through books
that I began to develop my
own passion for wild places.
The Shining Levels,
together with Ring of Bright
