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Oak hearts
Near the entrance to Old Broom is the first of the old oaks. Its heartwood exposed and ridged like a giant mammoth’s tooth. The children jostle each other with their elbows as they huddle into the door-shaped space, running their fingers around the raised lip of the bark and the exposed surface that marks more…
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The Badlands of Suffolk
This is a piece written originally for the Suffolk Magazine. There are hundreds of eyes on me when I walk on to Wangford Warren. Herds of rabbits. They skitter away in heart-quickening gallops or stand alert like prairie dogs. Cotton-tailed sentinels in the shadows of the razor wire and fences of Lakenheath Airbase . I…
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A note on a Hebridean boat trip
The boat is swinging like a skidding car as it makes it way down a channel lined by dark grey cliffs. I can hear the engine is gunning but progress is painfully slow. This is where currents meet, two powerful columns of water crashing and somersaulting together in a washing machine of briny muscle. The…
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Brock star
This was a country diary piece written for the Suffolk Magazine about Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s badger hide. Dusk is falling as we arrive. Birds are bidding an explosive farewell to the light while owls ke-wick in greeting to the dark. They are marking a changing of the guard, that special time of day when the…
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Foxes Unearthed
The good people at Elliott & Thompson Books asked me to review Lucy Jones’ new book, Foxes Unearthed A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain. It’s the fox that has cast its spell on Lucy Jones. An animal surrounded by myth, controversy, complications and conflict. It captivates her; whether glimpsed in the countryside or sensed…
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Fox, deer and bone-chilling cold
This was originally a country diary piece that appeared in Suffolk Magazine It’s about an hour before dawn and the fingernail moon is the brightest thing in the sky over Lackford Lakes. Although there is little sign of the sun, the darkness feels like it is softening and features of this meadow are slowly starting…
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Note on Mellis
A friend has offered to show me around Mellis. It’s a place I’ve read about constantly in Roger Deakin’s work, but shamefully never visited. I meet her by the Memorial Hall after sneaking a look at Walnut Tree Farm, or at least the flash of yellow wall I can see from the road. The common…
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Wildness and the impermeable bog
In a time of flint tools and real wildness, there used to be bear and beaver at Roydon Fen. Even now, when this fragment of marsh is framed by a cul-de-sac that echoes its name, it’s easy to imagine them, toothy and paddle-tailed. Gnawing through the alders. I leave my car by the entrance sign and…
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Matt Gaw 