Today, there is no Edges and Entries, I have simply run out of time this week. The final post in this series of letters on the theme of coastlines will have to wait for next week.
However, if you wish to get your fix of liminality, I will gently point you in the direction of the post I shared yesterday, from Jan Elisabeth, From a bridge in a liminal forest. It is well worth your time and I am thrilled with how this series of posts have started.
You can also find the first of these walks, by Susie Mawhinney here, if you missed it. The original post is here, and if you wish to also take part, do let me know—leaving a comment is a good way to do so, or sending a DM, or replying to an email (although I have noticed an increase in Substack emails ending in Spam, for some reason—I now check this folder regularly, however.).
Long term readers, or those who have looked through my archive, will know that I used to send out letters once a month, usually, sometimes a little more. Each of these would be long and full of different facets. I did this for four years, before a reconsideration of how I use this space.
Seeing as I am out of time this week, I shall share a relevant portion of one of those posts, which was resting behind the paywall. (I’ve now removed this, so anyone can read the whole, should they wish.) It is from last year, shared on the last day of March. This year, our spring has been four to five days later—I keep a record of certain observations: the first brimstone butterfly, the first returning black redstart (the young ones from last year seem to stay here all year, the older ones head somewhere else), the first bats, and others. Otherwise, much of this piece, the introduction to that post, is still relevant. I have somehow resisted my natural urge to edit…
I am happy with how The Crow’s Nest has developed since this time last year, but I do sometimes miss sharing these little nature-centric introductions to those long monthly posts. Each is full of observation and thought, linked to time and place—a journal of sorts. I hope those of you who haven’t read this enjoy it, and those who might have done already enjoy rereading. Normal service should resume next week.
Mornings now, are filled with a reverberating choral promise of spring. The birds are in full song, not just at dawn but also each evening and often throughout the day, almost constantly. Living surrounded by woodland means we are in turn surrounded by calls and trills. The birds who make their homes among the trees cladding this once-glacial bowl are louder and more urgent than those in farmland or open spaces, their song needed to communicate through thick forest.
I have listened to birdsong all my life and I have never heard it as loudly, or as urgently, as I do here, each species seemingly simultaneously celebrating surviving another winter whilst reconnecting with others, partners, and worshipping the coming year.
There are species I know, others I have to seek out—I have an app, which is not always accurate, but it at least guides me to the species to double check. I heard a robin (the European kind, not the American) the other day, singing furiously, as is his way, then something different, something I did not know.
‘Hawfinch, uncertain,’ said the app. I checked other sources online and this switched to ‘Hawfinch, certain’.
There is often one precise day, usually in March, where I find everything suddenly seem to not only be possible, but also thoroughly exciting. A long to do list is a thrill, rather than a stress, and the cold air descending from the peaks brings a whisper of the hot days it will be welcome.
Sudden snow still falls higher up, although the peak to our south was almost naked until a few days ago, our little terrace basking and baking in burning sun, bees providing a deep droning counterpoint to the birds.
The sun, in the mornings, now rapidly descends the hillside across the river, the ridgeline beyond which lays the Belledonne and the north. That mountain to our south is illuminated earlier every day, the current snow cap getting a little less intense every day, but brilliant nevertheless. There has barely been any precipitation this year—France as a whole experienced its longest period without significant rainfall since records began and many lakes and rivers are already lower than they would be in summer1.
The direct sunlight appears above the ridge to the east ever earlier too, hitting my study window and reminding me that I really need to give the glass a clean.
At this point of the calendar, the buds have yet to hinder the view of the individual tree, each trunk and branches clear from a distance, the wood still failing to obscure the trees. It is easier to see where to find a birch, or a sweet chestnut stand, to observe where the soil is thin and rocky, with smaller hazel and other shrubs. The beech, the occasional oak, some ivy-clad, others with crowns dead or dying, stag-headed, all still standing tall and proud and naked. The sunlight picks out branches longing to be climbed, highlighting the perches of the buzzards or ravens, or the places where I have seen the eagles alight, imperious. A peregrine falcon lives somewhere nearby. I have seen him mobbed by crows.
But the trees are beginning to leaf, fast. Overnight, one will go from grey-brown skeleton to acidic green Monet, thousands upon thousands of buds unfurling and reaching for the light, each dot creating a restless image. Zoom out, and the image grows, each dot now a whole tree, a wider view. Here and there, blossom and flowering trees decorate the picture, or the deep dark green of the spruce or pine provides a counterpoint.
These woodlands are enchanting and full of life. There are plants I do not know, there those I do, many useful, medicinal, edible, friends old and new. The badgers have been out and about but there is no sign of the wild boar, yet. The hunting season has only ended relatively recently and they will be hiding somewhere in the thicker forest where they farrow, to later descend with their tiny striped piglets.
As the forest awakes and breathes, as it shakes off the chill of winter and stretches limb, trunk and branch, so do I. Spring is the beginning of a year for me, with the equinox the turning point, the fulcrum upon which pivots the outgoing and incoming 365 days. I awake and I stretch and I breathe the air of the changing season. It is good to be alive.
I hope you enjoyed this diversion—I enjoyed rereading it, it is good to return to words we craft, to consider them, and ask what we would edit or alter now2. Mostly, however, this just felt fitting to the now, to the woods around me, and the season which embraces us. I think it is important that we feel each season deeply, that we treat it like an old friend, and we listen as each tells us of the problems it faces.
Indeed, in the post I took this snippet from, I went on to discuss The Dark Mountain, to talk of uncivilisation. My stance since last year has not really altered—I am keeping my options open, keeping as much active hope as I can muster, yet aware that our world is changing at a frankly terrifying rate.
The winter which has just passed was the second-warmest on record for Europe. Here, there was more rainfall than last year, but still less than there should have been.
My own editing, of my novel The Care Industry, continues apace. I have set a minimum of one scene a day and, thus far (thanks in part to my tracking this habit in an app), this has worked, even on days when I worried I might break my streak. It is good to revisit these characters, to reconsider the plot, cutting and tightening and (if I’m honest) adding in extra words here and there. I want it to be tightly crafted, but I also know there is only so many words I can cut before it loses coherence. Watch this space.
Alexander - thanks for sharing this as I believe it was published before I had discovered you. I love how your writing really connects me to a place. When I read I feel that I am there in your locale and walking alongside you. I appreciate that your writing is clean and lean, not prone to overly descriptive adjectives but just the real scene as experienced by you. It is beautiful and I appreciate it.
I don’t think I had subscribed to The Crows Nest when you wrote the original post Alex, so this was a delightful wander through your spring albeit little later than hoped! I find more and more the importance of making with notes each year of seasons that passes. So much changes now with the climate as it is… I know you know!