Rewild Yourself While You Have the Time: Free Giveaway!

Luci in trouble yet again...

I was giving the dog our alloted 'exercise time' in the lanes around my house yesterday, when I realised how....normal things felt. Almost nothing has changed round here. Yes, birds are singing, there are skylarks over the fields and songbirds in the garden, the chiff-chaff bright and early this spring, willow warblers near the river and a woodpecker hammering hard over by the woods. Yes the butterflies are back, flitting together in pairs dressed ready for Strictly. But these are always  the artistic and musical accompaniments to my walks and gardening routine.

It is quiet, I'll admit, almost no one about. But that's fairly normal too.  I'm twenty minutes drive from the coast and so I'm not noticing the collapse of the tourist industry around Cardigan Bay, something that will devistate this year's finances for businesses such as restuarants and cafes, sightseeing tour oporatiors and water-sports instructors. Round here, 'quiet' is 'normal'. As I walk through the heart of my nearest village and I wave at couple of people,  the only difference is that we stop for a shout, rather than a chat. And in the narrow lanes, people out on the 'daily exercise' (usually plus dog, often plus kids), pull in tidily, using the driveways to field gates, so that others can safely pass.

hare

In the field next to my house, neighbouring farmer, Jason, has ploughed and sown his barley, as he did last year, the red kites losing the battle of the air currents to a gang of crows, just like they always do.   We  can chat safely, separated safely by the thickness of bank and hedge. He tells me to use the field to walk the dog, now that I can't go to my friend's field for our daily 'dog meet'. But that suggestion, I'm sorry to say, was a howling failure. Luci, always curious found a hole in the hedge and spent ten minutes racing back and fore across the road, as I raced in muddy boots towards the gate to get her on the lead. Two cars crawled by, and she obeyed the 'sit for the car' instruction she'd been previously indoctrinated with (cars usually speed along our pavemenless lanes) and came up to me on the bank, separated by barbed wire, while they passed.

Last of the snowdrops

Apart from adventures with growing puppies, I can't believe my luck. My heart goes out to people living in flats, watching the sun move round the sky from their windows. People living in houses with gardens are counting their blessings, and friends admit to me that, where perhaps up until recently the neighbours were an irritation, if anything, especially the one that constantly popped round on the borrow,  can only be spied when clapping the NHS on their doorsteps. I bet people are missing the next-door chatter they never previously bothered to have, scurrying home from work and keeping themselves to themselves.

First of the cowslips

So our routine has amost not changed at all, except my walks are alone, my Welsh lessons are on line, and I can't go circle dancing.  Instead, we're so far forward with the gardening, we have to remind ourselves that this is Wales, and you can plant out too early. 

All this gives us such a great chance to observe what nature is doing. As I say above, nothing has changed with nature, it's us that have the opportunity to properly look and see. So long as you can escape from your bricks and morter for the alloted allowed time and find some sort of nature to pass within, or beside...even if it's just other people's front gardens....you can open your eyes and see nature at her spring's work right in front of you.

a magical yew tree

I've been reading the latest book by Simon Barnes, the naturalist and twitcher, Rewild Yourself...23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible (Simon and Shuster 2018).  It's a great read for anyone interested in nature, but especially those who would like to know a blackbird's song from a robin's, and a red admiral from a painted lady…but don't yet. Now's your chance to get wild.

River Teifi with Coracles

Barnes uses magic to unlock nature in this book; magical spells from Harry Potter, the Narnia books, Shakespeare, Wallace and Gromit and even Rudyard Kipling, al of which help magic-up nature  to people who have never really been able to see it.  The  23 chapters have titles like The Magic Tree, The Magic Trousers, The Snake-charming Spell, Time Travel, Reading the Secret Signs, The Magician's Library and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. 

A bit of Hogwart Magic

Barnes says...Don't seek health; seek wrens. Don't go looking for eternal life; go looking for birds. Don't set out on the track of wellness and mindfulness; set out onn the track of deer. 

He uses the example are the runners that jog past him in the park. I give a cheery wave, burt it's ignored...they've filled their ears with music to make up for any shortfall in the wold world.  
Barnes helps you take off the blindfold and the ear plugs that have been impeding you.  He takes you out in a rowboat, gets you plunging your face into the sea, makes you stare half a mile away through binoculars and teaches you several 'summoning spells' all in the aid of making hidden wildlife appear before your very eyes and ears.

The Bowl Nature Reseve

I think my eyes were first opened, and the ear plugs thrust away, when I discovered The Bowl, a tip of derelict land near my old house in Bristol that is now a nature reserve. That's a story for another time, another blogpost.
 Right now, I have a new copy of his book to give away. 
To win Rewild Yourself  by Simon Barnes, all you have to do is email me at kitchentablewriters@live.com. Please write one or two sentences telling me why you think you should be sent the free book (UK only please). 

I hope to announce the winner in my next blog.

In the meantime, think about what Barnes is saying...even in the twenty-first century you can be where the wild things are. There days, non-human life always seems to be just over the horizon, just beyond the threshold of our understanding, just a little bit short of our awareness––but even with the smallest alteration all this can change. The lost world can ber found; the hidden creatures that share our planet can be brought before us glowing in  gold and blue and scarlet.