| At The Water’s Edge: A Personal Quest for Wildness - John Lister Kaye |
|
I am a townie, born and bred. At The Water’s Edge is a book about all things wild. Not, you might think, the happiest combination, but that would be to overlook the power and beauty of the prose and persuasiveness of the arguments.
On the face of it, this is a book with a haphazard structure – a series of jottings or journal entries made throughout the year which lead the author into occasional musings on various aspects of the environment. In fact, the structure feels much more considered than that.
John Lister Kaye is not only a talented writer. He is also one of Britain’s foremost naturalists and environmental educators. The observations in his journal entries are all captured from his daily circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch.
The exact location is never mentioned for this is not a book about a specific place. It’s about how to experience nature – wherever you may find it – stirred by the inventiveness of the descriptions.
“In the distance,” he writes, “throat-pouting cuckoos will float pairs of muted minims into the air like audible smoke rings”.
I, for one, will never be able to hear cuckoos in quite the same way again nor remain blind to the sunrise after reading: “Above my head the morning sky is bandaged in layers; in an hour I know that the sun will lever into its lint fuzziness”.
Then there is the drama of the encounters with wildlife as diverse as otters, ospreys, pine martens, goshawks and weasels.
Yet wonderful as these characterisations of animal life are, readers are never left in any doubt of what he calls, “the great barriers between wildness and the human state”, for “wildness” — what it means, how it has evolved, and what future it has are at the heart of this book.
In this respect, the author not only offers a feast for the senses but stimulus for the intellect. The tale of a trout hunted by an osprey which inadvertently provides sustenance for an otter turns into a fascinating rumination on the way in which “energy drives us all”, while being caught in a strong wind leads to the thought that “wildness exists in us all, but we need the will to locate it and put it to work”.
Throw in Norse mythology, perfume, photosynthesis and the role of competition in survival of the planet, and you have an exhilarating read.
|
|
|
|
