Category: Nature
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Searching for river ghosts
This piece appeared in the Suffolk Magazine, as part of a collaboration with photographer Sarah Groves. Her wonderful images and blog can be found at the bottom of this entry. It was written in February but I like to give the magazine some breathing space before posting here. The moon is beginning to sink as…
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Swifts
A piece I wrote on swifts for the Suffolk Magazine. Already looking forward to their return. My wife is in Africa. A twelve hour flight across sea, mountains, time zones and desert. She’s tired when I talk to her. Hot and caked in red dust from the loose roads of the Rift Valley. The air itself,…
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Toad song
This was a piece for the Suffolk Magazine, published back in spring. It’s hard to tell where one toad ends and another starts. It’s a throbbing knot, a slowly revolving mass of arms and legs. Male toads, smaller than the female, often hitch a piggyback to the breeding pond, sometimes riding pinion for three days…
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A Sweet, Wild Note
The good people at Elliott & Thompson asked me to review Richard Smyth’s new book. I was at a conference last year when one of the delegates balked at the idea of being called a nature writer. To be one of those, he suggested, would put him outside of nature: a false god looking down…
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Working the woods
We follow the tractor and its fishtailing trailer along the track, making our way slowly towards where the woodsmen have been working for the last two months. The sun rose red over Bradfield Woods a few hours ago, but in amongst the coppices the night’s cold still lingers. Puddles splinter and crack underfoot and the…
Matt Gaw 