How Nature Helps Us to Weather Life’s Storms
Weathering explores our connection to the rocks and mountains that have withstood aeons of life on our planet – gradually eroding, shifting, solidifying and weathering. We might spend a little less time on earth, but we are also weathering – evolving and changing due to the shifting climates of our lives.
The author takes us on a journey through deep time and ancient landscapes, showing how geology can offer a new way of thinking on grief, change and boundaries. In a world shaken by physical, political and medical disasters, the book argues for a deeper understanding of the ground beneath our feet.
Originally trained as a geologist, Ruth Allen PhD has a doctorate in Himalayan mountain-building, and now teaches a woodland-based educational programme for teenage girls in northern England.
Land Beneath the Waves (how nature helps chronic illness)
Land Beneath the Waves is a moving and honest memoir of a nature writer, who lives with chronic illness. She begins by researching the history of her local landscape and wildlife, realising her affinity with the wild, as she coped with a mother who also had debilitating chronic illness.
Now in her 40s (and struggling with mental and physical health herself), the author revisits her childhood to trace the natural world on her life. And as boundaries between self and land become increasingly porous, and the lure of the wetlands around her home, threaten to engulf her.
Nic Wilson is a writer and Guardian country diarist. She taught A-level English before working freelance for a gardening magazine.
Wintering: The Power of Rest in Difficult Times
Wintering is a comforting meditation on the periods of life, when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. The author thoughtfully shows how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.
Read posts on keeping safe in snow and frosty mornings.
A moving personal narrative on the transformative power of rest and retreat, illumination emerges from many sources, not least the hibernation of creatures like sleepy dormice.
Plants and animals don’t fight the winter. They don’t pretend it’s not happening, and attempt to carry on living the same lives they had lived in the summer. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, and vanishing from sight.
But that’s where the transformation occurs. Its’ a time for reflection and recuperation, and for putting your house in order. Slowing down, getting enough sleep, resting.
This is an invite to accept sadness, and find nourishment in deep retreat, and joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and an understanding of life as cyclical.
May thoughtfully examines the emotional, spiritual, and geographical reality of the cold times, the dark days, and those periods of our lives when things are neither soft nor easy.
In so doing, she offers a great and humane service to her readers: she shows us that wintering cannot be avoided, but need not be feared. Elizabeth Gilbert
Katherine May is a renowned writer and speaker, whose work touches on nature, slow living and spiritualty. She is author of the popular Substack newsletter The Clearing. She lives by the sea in Kent, and loves walking, sea-swimming and cooking feasts.
In the Hide (how nature saved Gordon’s life)
In the Hide is the autobiography of popular TV wildlife presenter Gordon Buchanan. The title refers to how as a child, he would long to be invisible, so that he could simply be ‘in the hide’ to be with the world’s most elusive creatures, rather than spend time with humans.
A lot of us know how he feels!
Born in Scotland, on an estate built on land claimed from fields, he grew up on the edge of wild countryside, that he longed to walk as his own sanctuary.
Today, Gordon lives close to polar bears in Svalbard, snow wolf packs in Ellesmere, leopards in Mumbai and wild horses in Mongolia, having filmed wildlife in the world’s most remote places.
Gordon Buchanan is an award-winning presenter and wildlife cameraman, who has worked on Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
Some Of Us Just Fall (how nature helps genetic illness)
Some Of Us Just Fall is a unique book by a gifted writer, on how people with genetic illness can use nature to feel better. It traces a remarkable journey through illness – from misdiagnosis to wild swimming in the Lake District.
Polly examines her genetic inheritance, and her place in the natural world. After not getting results from doctors or her own body, she finally found some relief in nature.
The Lake District is famous for its rain. The wettest inhabited valley in England lies only 10 miles over the fells from my home. This is weather pushed to the extremes of itself.
Polly Atkin is an award-winning writer and poet who lives in the Cumbrian town where Wordsworth lived (she wrote a biography on his sister’s later life and illness). She co-founded the Open Mountain Initiative, which seeks to centre voices on the margins for outdoor, mountain and nature writing.
