Field Studies

This sequence of twelve collections of short essays range through weather, plants, birds, insects, geology, waterways, seasons, farming and human traces – all emerging from close attention to the local Pennine landscape. Written across a year from November 2021, each piece is an attempt to slow down and look carefully at what is underfoot, overhead and alongside the paths my eight-year-old son and I walked together. Though the essays take in landscape-related music, TV, radio and literature, the heart of the series remains noticing the particulars of our own place, the patterns of its land and life, and the way a child’s presence reshapes what is seen.