The Nature of Spring

Seasons

by Jim Crumley

Spring is nature’s season of rebirth and rejuvenation. Earth’s northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun, winter yields to intensifying light and warmth, and a wild, elemental beauty transforms the Highland landscape and a repertoire of islands from Colonsay to Lindisfarne. Jim Crumley chronicles the wonder, tumult and spectacle of that transformation, but he shows too that it is no Wordsworthian idyll that unfolds. Climate chaos brings unwanted drama to the lives of badger and fox, seal and seabird and raptor, pine marten and sand martin. Jim lays bare the impact of global warming and urges us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Scotland, Science, Natural History, Poetry

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 4, 2019

About the author

Jim Crumley is a Scottish nature writer with almost 20 books to his name, mostly on the landscape and wildlife of Scotland. He is renowned for his style - passionate, inspiring, visionary, sensitive, majestic - no work of his should be missed. He is also a columnist and presenter of radio programmes.

He has also received the accolade of '...the best nature writer now working in Great Britain...' from David Craig in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regardless of what happens in the world, the seasons come and go without fail. The seasons may be stretched a little, especially with the effects of climate change at the moment as they seem to blend into each other more and more. With spring the main moment for me is when we reach the equinox, that day when the night and day are exactly the same length; 12 hours. This year that day was the 20th March and that seemed to me to be the best time to start this book by Crumley.

Spring in Scotland often begins with snow on the ground and in his first chapter of the book he is watching a kestrel over a landscape that is scattered with small patches of snow. She drops from the twig into the wind and begins to hunt. They keep pace with each other at a distance and just as he reached some newly planted native trees, she turns and rushes away downwind. Soon after he hears a mistle thrush singing as the urge to find a mate becomes all-consuming. These are what he considers the first syllables of spring.

Following the traces of spring around Scotland will take him up in the Highlands, and to the islands of Mull, Iona, Lismore and he even ventures out of Scotland to visit Lindisfarne on the Northumbrian coast. If feels like you are alongside him as he is watching the antics of Sea Eagles or spotting an unusual encounter between a fox and a pine marten or being a handful of yards away from a grey coated roebuck.

As with his other books in the series, this is another brilliant book from Crumley. He is passionate about his subjects too; his eye for the details of the way that the creatures behave, coupled with the descriptions of the landscape make this such a good book. He is not afraid to use the book as a soapbox either, putting forward solid arguments on a variety of subjects that he cares about. This is the third in the series so far, and there is just the final book, The Nature of Summer, to look forward to.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOTW

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00...

Description: In a series of poetic vignettes, nature writer Jim Crumley paints a captivating picture of Scotland’s wilderness in spring and the joys of observing its abundant wildlife. The staccato, jazzily-inventive sound of the mistle thrush singing for a mate acts as a harbinger of Spring while kestrels hover over the Stirlingshire hills and peregrine falcons act out their courtship. A majestic sea eagle with its vast wingspan swoops incongruously over the Lowland hills and a peregrine starts to mimic the eagle’s flight pattern. Then, at a mere ten yards, he’s face to face with a Roebuck, armed with blood-smeared antlers and a hostile stare.
Reader: Simon Tait. Abridger: Linda Cracknell. Producer: Bruce Young.

Jean Sibelius - Symphony No. 6, Op. 104 - Leif Segerstam

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - book of the week:
In a series of poetic vignettes, nature writer Jim Crumley paints a captivating picture of Scotland’s wilderness in spring and the joys of observing its abundant wildlife. The staccato, jazzily-inventive sound of the mistle thrush singing for a mate acts as a harbinger of Spring while kestrels hover over the Stirlingshire hills and peregrine falcons act out their courtship. A majestic sea eagle with its vast wingspan swoops incongruously over the Lowland hills and a peregrine starts to mimic the eagle’s flight pattern. Then, at a mere ten yards, he’s face to face with a Roebuck, armed with blood-smeared antlers and a hostile stare.
Reader: Simon Tait. Abridger: Linda Cracknell. Producer: Bruce Young.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

[Wanda]

11 APR 2019 - a recommendation through Dear Laura. Many Thanks. Don't you just love this cover? I do! Hello Little Marten!

Listen here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

[Sanjuro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part one of this book, through page 61, was brilliant. Everything after that was a chore, and at points even deeply frustrating.

The book opens with wonderful descriptions of the relationships between various birds of prey at a certain location in the Scottish Highlands, and having spent time up there, I loved reading about these interactions. I'm also a fan of peregrines, which star here, and I have a lukewarm relationship with Baker's famous book on the peregrines, as does this author. For these first 61 pages, I was hooked, and I loved his use of language.

However, I believe that nature writers are always better observers than they are judges, and as Crumley gets comfortable into his subject, he begins making judgments, and may of them are either ignorant or offensive or both. I'm not talking about climate change, a subject with which Crumley and I wholeheartedly agree. I'm talking many of his other more haphazard judgments which get little attention but make a strongly negative impression. Crumley's judgments are all the more frustrating because early in the book he comments that his is a profession which requires an open mind, but he goes out of his way to demonstrate that his mind is surely closed on many things. Here are 4 examples:

1. On pages 142-144 Crumley discusses, and subtly but explicitly mocks, people who participate in the Northern Cross Pilgrimage on Lindisfarne. He openly calls their experience a waste of time, and when referring to them as people with a "preoccupation with trying to save your soul," he states that his own experience of Lindisfarne is somehow superior (and therefore more correct?) than their own. I have no need to know the faith disposition of Crumley himself - if he can write well I'll read him no matter his own disposition - but to mock the faith experiences of others is nasty, ignorant, and arrogant.
2. On pages 67-68 Crumley judges that all zoos are prisons, and states that they imprison animals in order to put them on display. Crumley seems completely ignorant to the fact that the best arguments in favor of many zoos comes from the conservation community itself, and he fails to distinguish between or recognize the difference between good zoos and bad zoos. There are bad zoos for sure, but many zoos are necessary for conservation and animal care. They are homes to injured animals that cannot survive in the wild, they do research and lead procreation efforts, and they raise funds and awareness for conservation efforts. His criticisms in large part were based on seeing a sea eagle in a zoo, he made a snap psychoanalysis of the eagle, and then admitted that he didn't even know why the eagle was there!!! - but he assumed a nefarious purpose and condemned all zoo activity. This is grossly ignorant.
3. On page 69 Crumley mentions that the ultimate folly of our species is our attempt to manipulate nature. While this can be true, depending on what a person means, he fails to properly understand that we ARE a part of nature. If a bear happens upon a badger, no one wonders why the bear doesn't remain distinct from the scene. As an element of nature, the bear has as much right to the space as the badger. But, Crumley, when he comes across certain elements (including badgers), buys into the idea that he is somehow "other" than the scene, or "other" than nature, and therefore has less of a right to be there. This makes no sense. Our cognitive development does not make us "other." There are ways in which we destroy nature, sure (deforestation comes to mind), but Crumley seems to think he is "other" than that which he observes, and it's an odd way to look at biological life.
4. Lastly, and less egregious than the previous three, Crumley discusses his desire, when Scotland eventually becomes independent (and it surely will sooner or later), to annex Lindisfarne for Scotland. He says this on the heels of criticizing England's natural makeup as somehow inferior and undeserving of their own more glorious spaces. I know this is a pipe dream and somewhat in jest, but it's clearly elitist and arrogant, and piles onto other such arrogance found throughout the book. Keep in mind, I'm not English. I've lived in Scotland, but never England. This is not some defense born on something personal for me. I just think his comments were in poor taste.

I wanted to like this book, and at points I did. Aside from the four points mentioned here, the book also became tedious as it went on, and rather than the development in Spring, Crumley began simply describing being on the islands - not so much describing them in Spring mind you, just - being on them. The first 61 pages had SO much promise that simply did not materialize as the book went on. I'll pass on the other books in this series.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow, nature writing about the Highlands of Scotland, which I enjoyed - I'll probably read the others in this series.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little disappointed in this book, which perhaps should more appropriately be titled ‘The Nature of Spring in the Scottish Highlands’. The emergence of wild flowers, which for many of us is THE sign of Spring, hardly gets a mention, despite the blurb.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘No job requires a more open mind than mine.’

'The Nature of Spring' is the third in Jim Crumley’s wonderful series about the seasons. It was written in the spring of 2018, when the weather was so extraordinary that few could deny that things were changing. In February the ‘Beast from the East’ brought 18 inches of snow (and a week of panic buying) to Scotland, only to be followed by unseasonably high temperatures which were soon chased away by more cold weather. Crumley went out to look for the signs of spring, and realised most of them weren’t there.

Nature, it seemed, had put itself on hold.

‘Springlessness was rife across the length and breadth of the land.’

Revisiting his favourite, remote haunts – quiet places that he has studied year upon year – Crumley looks at the effects of climate change on the animals and flowers of northern Scotland. Often questioning received wisdom about animal behaviour, he writes lyrically about what he actually sees, celebrating the good (the return of the sea eagle), mourning the bad (choughs can’t seem to sustain their numbers no matter how hard everyone tries to help them), deprecating man’s appalling record of hunting many species to extinction, and laughing with the comedians (like the puffins who dive bomb every unwary Isle of May day tripper).

Generalisation – he calls it ‘field guide syndrome’ - is anathema to him;

‘There are smart and stupid swans, sociable and stand-offish swans, aggressive and passive swans’

as is the practice of applying human logic to animal behaviour; peregrine logic may bear no relation to ours, but that doesn’t make it illogical.

This time Crumley focuses particularly on islands – from Mull to Colonsay, May, Iona, Lismore, Yell and even an unusual foray south of the border to Holy Island (Lindisfarne) and its enchanting causeway.

‘I thirst for the Hebrides and the Northern Isles as a desert wanderer thirsts for oases’

From Brent geese to seals, falcons and foxes, his writing opens our eyes to the real pilgrims to the isles, holy or otherwise;

‘The oldest pilgrimages here are all nature’s. We call it migration.’

There is at times great sadness in this book. The image of the last sea eagle, returning year after year to find its never-to-return mate, of the wolves eradicated from the Highlands by man’s insatiable appetite for killing anything that he does not understand. But deep thoughts on global warming, inept conservation practices and the poetry of the land are levened by spellbinding meetings with particular animals. Crumley is a self-confessed expert in sitting still; it’s a skill that enables him to watch badgers climb mountains, to witness a pine marten and a vixen touch noses, to see a stoat lying on its back, juggling with an acorn just for fun.

And it’s not just animals that entrance him; in the Ochil Hills a monochrome sky turns his thoughts to Mark Rothko, whose work ‘leads to a new wholeness of thought and vision’ (Franz Meyer). A certain waterfall and its ‘heartstring-tug setting’ brings to mind Gavin Maxwell and Hemingway and their writings on the soul. We have become, Crumley says, so distant from nature that we sometimes cannot articulate its beauty and wildness, we cannot explain what we feel (though if anyone can it’s surely him). It’s no surprise, then, that he is also a jazz musician, for surely jazz is at times another attempt to articulate the inexpressible? Jazz is, he says, ‘the sound of wonder’, and wonder is perhaps the greatest quality of Crumley’s fresh, sharp, inquisitive, and truly sublime writing.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

My relationship with JC's writing remains as complicated as ever:

When it comes to writing about nature and describing encounters with wild (plant or animal) life, Jim Crumley is one of the best and most evocative writers. His love for nature and his complete immersion in it means he gets to see some amazing things. He also has a wry humor that appears unexpectedly that makes the writing more lively.

Where I always end up clashing with him is anything he writes that involves humans. And I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of other people. But whether it's how he talks about Lindisfarne pilgrims, Munro-baggers and other mountainfans, scientists whose approach he doesn't agree with... he always gives the impression that he sees his way of interacting with 'the wild' as the only correct one. And thus I get the feeling that his open-mindedness when it comes to nature only goes so far. And if that works for hin that's great, it just ends up rubbing me the wrong way.

[Claire Milne · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the nights become longer and the birds start to sing louder I always move to nature based books. I have read many of Jim Crumley's books and this one was as good as the others. He has a real affinity with the land and wildlife and it comes through in his writing. Lovely birthday present from my husband and children. Now looking forward to reading the others in the series. Looking forward to seeing him talk in At Andrews later this month.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book about the nature of Spring in Scotland and the many plants and animals that inhabit it. It was very well written, as are all Jim’s books, however the chapters after the wolf chapter didn’t quite engage me the same as everything that had gone before that. It could be a me thing rather than a knock on the author’s writing, and I also somewhat rushed reading this book to make sure I finished it before Spring ended. Overall a great book though.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me this book started as really interesting and then seemed to lose its way a bit. However, its saving grace and reason for the four stars is that we just happened to be touring in the East of Scotland when I got to the chapters particularly covering that area so we detoured to do a hike in Glen Clova.

I need to read this book again and be more mindful!!

[JoJo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful language and description