The Stubborn Light of Things – Harrison/Faber

Melissa Harrison has been writing a monthly Nature Notebook column in The Times since 2014-this collection of her pieces takes her from South London to Suffolk where she now lives; although she makes regular visits to London. Whether in the back gardens of south London or revealing her first encounter with a nightingale in the wild; not only is she the perfect literary guide, as Andrew Holgate says, ‘unshowy, sensitive and knowledgeable’ -she is also an enthusiastic walker, often with her dog, Scout.

10th October 2015: South London

‘ Last weekend we (Melissa and Scout) drove to Farthing Downs, a rolling chalk escarpment in Coulsdon with breathtaking views. Along with nearby sites New Hill, Devilsden Wood, Eight Acres Common and the aptly named Happy Valley, it’s a real rural idyll, and on the fine autumn it’s almost impossible to believe that you’re in Greater London at all.

As we walked I listened out for skylarks singing over its central ridge, while Scout raced madly around flushing rabbits from the thickets and grinning. There are crepuscular yew woods, badger setts, woodcock, and the slotted prints of shy roe deer, while an Iron Age enclosure and Anglo-Saxon barrows testify to our long relationship with this place.’

21st December 2019: Suffolk

Unless I’m ill I walk every day, whether or not Scout is staying with me. Getting out and seeing what the natural world is up to is an essential part of my life, and I don’t want to have to get into the car to do it; I just want to sling a coat on, lace up my boots and go. So before buying my Suffolk cottage I studied the local Ordnance Survey maps, looking for the rights of way marked in green, and then I came and walked here, trying to sense what it might be like to tramp them day in, day out, as the seasons changed.

There are enough paths around my new village that I can vary my direction according to the weather and my mood, taking a different route every day of the week if I like. Some are clearly very ancient, linking one part of the village to another, or the village with the distant spire of a neighbouring church; some follow routes once taken by carts and farm wagons , while others seem little more than ‘desire paths’ made by modern dog walkers out for the obligatory stroll.

And it’s not just we human beings that use them; many are trodden by animals too, as the sticky, ‘loving’, print-preserving mud of the eastern claylands attests. When I first got Scout it surprised me that she would always find and follow a path, however faint it seemed or far ahead she got; what continues to fascinate me now is the fact that wild creatures, from deer to foxes, will take the same line across an open field that humans do.’