Nature Cure

by Richard Mabey

Richard Mabey's descent into clinical depression was so annihilating that he could neither work nor play, nor sustain relationships with family or friends. He was drinking too much — and, worst of all, had lost all pleasure in the outside world. This remarkable book charts his gradual return to joyfulness.Richard Mabey had lived his whole life in the Chilterns. As a boy, he had tramped over the hills, bird-watching and botanizing. As a man, he purchased a large wood, which he studied in detail over a number of years. He drew on the experience of the Chilterns in all his writings. When depression dragged him under, he felt as if all this was lost, denied, destroyed. In Nature Cure he describes how he found the courage to change his habitat — from hills and chalk to watery fens and flat open spaces. He moved to Norfolk. He fell in love. Slowly, he started once more to look about him.Drawing always on the metaphors and myths of nature — the migration of birds, the magic of the changing seasons — he shows how the British countryside increased his understanding of what really matters and restored his sense of delight.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Natural History, Memoir, Biography, Mental Health, Psychology

244 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Richard Mabey is one of England's greatest nature writers. He is author of some thirty books including Nature Cure which was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Ondaatje and Ackerley Awards.

A regular commentator on the radio and in the national press, he is also a Director of the arts and conservation charity Common Ground and Vice-President of the Open Spaces Society. He lives in Norfolk.

Reviews

[Ade Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not immediately, but slowly, the book settled in and helped me find a gentler rhythm. From tentative strolls in the park to the remote hills and wind which blew my blues away, this book helped me too find new delight in a world turned grey for too long.

[Juliet Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently started leading a series of birdwatching walks for City of Edinburgh Council's Outlook Project, which works with adults with mental health problems. I felt that Richard Mabey's Nature Cure would be a great book to read alongside these walks, dealing as it does with the author's recovery from depression and his reaquaintance with the natural world.

When Mabey became depressed, he was already a well-known nature writer and the main argument in his book is that getting out into nature in itself isn't necessarily a cure for depression, but rather that it is the building (or in his case re-building) a personal relationship with nature.

The book is less of a practical guide to nature therapy and more of a personal memoir about moving to a different part of the country and learning the different landscape and wildlife, alongside musings on the historical human relationships with the natural world.

As Mabey recovers, his powers of observation seem to intensify, allowing him to become more and more re-engaged in the natural world around him. His mental state remains fragile though as he worries about whether the usual summer migrants will return, the uncertainties of nature, specially in today' world of so much environmental turmoil, feeding into his own uncertainties.

"I hadn't heard the shrill flutings of the blackcaps that should have been abundant in the fens, or for that matter that first herald of spring, a chiffchaff. Had they been diorientated too, blown off their traditional routeways by Mediterranean storms? My nightmare, that those ancient ecological links with the south might finally be broken, wouldn't go away."

This is wonderfully beautiful meditation on the links between humans and nature and how, just as our connections with nature can help keep our minds whole, the damage we are, as a species, doing to those connections can cause dislocations in our mental health.

[Dantanian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book which certainly helped me with my depressions, and Mr Mabey was kind enough to write back to me a couple of times, which was splendid of him!

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing in The Guardian, Jonathan Bate says:

Nature Cure is several books in one: an honest memoir of the experience of mental illness, a gentle but firm manifesto for a greener way of life, a compendium of delicate observation and curious nature lore.

It is also, as he points out, a “love song” to John Clare, much admired by Richard Mabey. Mabey calls his opening chapter “The Flitting” which is the title of Clare’s poem about his disorientation on moving out of the house he had grown up in. And Clare makes repeated appearances in the later chapters of the book.

One of the main reasons I read this book was as a sort of antidote to my recent reading of “Ash Before Oak”. That book was a novel, a work of fiction, about a man with mental issues and his cataloguing of nature as means of helping him to recover. I use the word “cataloguing” carefully, because the narrator of Ash Before Oak does not engage with nature but simply observes it as a way to keep his mind off darker things. That book did not work for me and I decided to read, in response, this book in which a man of approximately the same age also heads to the countryside to meet with nature for his cure. Both men spend time in a mental hospital. Both men find a new female companion. Both men take trips out of the UK towards the end of their “cure”. But Mabey is far more engaged with nature. As I nowadays spend my time trying to be a photographer of the natural world, Mabey’s approach resonates with me far more.

That said, Mabey’s story isn’t simply one of “go for a walk every morning and nature will do the rest”. Mabey’s life up to this point had been centred on nature: writing about it was how he made his living. His depression brought a very real fear that he would lose that connection. As he gradually recovers, he writes several discourses on different topics related to the natural world. He makes pleas for people to recognise the way nature works, to work alongside nature not seeking just to control or dominate it. He writes at the time of the build up to the Iraq war and The Guardian review goes on to say:

The depression and the slow process of recovery are played out against the distant backdrop of the build-up to the Iraq war and - closer to home - the relentless march of soil-destroying agribusiness and soul-destroying land development in East Anglia. Mabey's experience of severance from the "common ground" thus becomes a little allegory of the larger-scale ecocide that pervades modern capitalism and geopolitics.

In effect, Mabey writes himself well again by focusing on topics of nature that he is afraid to lose connection with and writing passionately about these. If you are interested in nature, you will find this a fascinating and informative book to read. If you are not a “nature fanatic”, this book might be a bit harder work.

Two quick notes about the Kindle edition I read. On first mention, Mabey’s companion is called Poppy, but is subsequently referred to as Polly. Most reviews I have looked at suggest she is called Poppy, so I am not sure where the Polly came from. Secondly, there are author's notes at the end of the book, but these are not indicated in the text so come as a bit of a surprise - the Kindle takes you back from the notes to the right place in the book, but there is no indication in the text there is an associated footnote at any point.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

And then, in late May, after all the false starts and unfulfilled days, summer opened as if it had simply been waiting for the right moment. And not just any old summer, but what was to become a season of burnished colour and intoxicating smells that banished elegies for days “like they used to be” and burnt itself into Eastern England’s collective memory. By a stroke of luck, I was up at dawn on the morning it started. There was a mist hanging over the back meadow, a thin milkiness that was hard to tell from the blowsy lace of the last cow parsley. Then the sun came up and simply parted it, unfolded the life of the new day from the wisps of the night. That, it said, decisively was how it was going to be from now on”.

I must admit to being entirely unfamiliar with the author (“Britain’s foremost author of nature literature”) – but was drawn to this book by a review by Neil who favourably contrasted it to the underwhelming “Ash Before Oak”, and when I saw it featured Breckland - the area of my birth and childhood I had to buy it

Ostensibly the book is about the author, in the aftermath of a severe depression, moving from his family home in the Chiltern hills (an area which he loved and where a period he even owned his own wood) to the initially unusual to him, open flatlands and wetlands of Norfolk – and there re-finding his love of nature and by extension his love for life. At the same time though it contains detailed reflections on the English countryside, on nature writing and nature loving.

I found the author’s developing reaction to the new countryside interesting. Growing up in a farming area and then moving to the Surrey Hills (where fields just seem to stand empty), I initially found the countryside somewhat artificial and museum-like and could not think of somewhere as rural that had such proximity to London, airports and motorways – although I now love the views of Leith Hill (some ten miles distant) from the desk where I am writing this review.

Mabey coming to a land of fir plantations, pheasant rearing estates and industrial farming has the opposite reaction – although he falls in love with the watery openness of his new home.

Although the area where he lives is somewhat East of my childhood home – I enjoyed the familiarity of Wayland Woods (for him one of the few surviving ancient woods – for me evoking memories of cross country torture) and Grimes Graves.

And as someone who has just bought a barn, a few miles from each of Salle and Corpusty, I loved these two separate passages:

I had favourite imaginary retreats … the strings of villages in Norfolk’s heartland – Sall, Corpusty, Guist, Fulmodesten
The barns themselves were flattened or made into smart houses

I also though enjoyed the reflections on nature writing. Of the limited nature books I have read, I have grappled with issues such as: the nativist attitude to flora and fauna – which seems both naïve (what does native mean) and very close to xenophobia; the harking back to better days in the past (the two attitudes together reminiscent of Brexit); the obsession with naming/observing/recording nature rather than just enjoying it.

Mabey addresses all of these: there is a great and lengthy chapter on naming which I found honest, helpful and insightful: he gives a balanced treatment of the idea of integrity of species, hybridisation and so on (which is openly scathing of the Spanish bluebell debate – see below); and despite liking old fashioned technology he is open to things not always being "better in the old days" as the, beautifully written, opening quote shows.

Believers in steady-state ecosystems and “the integrity of our species” have begun a myth that the aliens will “hybridise our English bluebells out of existence” – a familiar line of argument to anyone who lives in an inner city …….. Our two oak species, English and sessile, have been cross-bredding freely for ten thousand years without the slightest sign of theone eliminating the other’s “pure stock” … Nature itself has scant regard for the purity of species, and has been experimenting with new combinations and launching mongrels on the world ever since life began

My thanks to Neil for the recommendation.

[Mark Newton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprised, as I thought I'd like this more, given I've liked Mabey's other works. This just seemed a tad too self-indulgent at times and went off on a few too many tangents.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can nature heal a damaged spirit? Mabey's story suggests that it can. But what a long, wordy journey it was.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Literature and Environment.
Reading Mabey's NATURE CURE in parallel to Macdonald's H IS FOR HAWK provided two interesting perspectives for the ways in which people, specifically writers, in hard times turn to nature and the ways in which they associate with it. I'm not sure if I will use this as a primary text (I'm yet to read Mark Cocker's CROW'S COUNTRY) but I definitely will use it in some way in my essay.

[Cliff M · Rating 4 out of 5]

As everyone knows, it’s a lovely gentle discourse on rediscovering a love for nature while recovering from (and as part of recovering from) depression. The knowledge of the author is incredible, as is his deep love for the subject and (ironically?) for life in general. Truly inspiring. I wanted to head out into the woods and waterways the whole time I was reading it.

[Helbob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this honest and uplifting book about the ascent out of clinical depression by the author Richard Mabey. Flora Britannica (Mabey's detailed homage to the flora of the British Isles) has a forever place on my bookshelves. It was soon after it's completion and publication that he suffered from the crushing depression that this book considers. It is less about the illness itself but more about the way that nature, and his interaction with it, began to 'cure' him. A lovely, poignant and occasionally funny book.

[Lynn]

I got about a third of the way in, wandered off and never could make myself start reading again. I think I expected the author to gently and gradually lead us through his process of healing via nature, but instead it felt like, "Hey, I got really depressed and then I got better, and now let's talk about some birds."

[alexandra pintea · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do we fit in?
'But I began to wonder - I hope not just rationalising my own naivety - if wilderness was really what I wanted, or should want. Truly wild places should be for the wild creatures that live there, and only secondarily to give us revelatory experiences. If we go into them it should be as a privilege, and on the same term as the creatures that live there, unarmed and on foot. They cannot be treated as convenience habitats, available off-the-peg, and in that sense America has got it right. But what I missed was some common ground between the wilderness and the thoroughly domesticated, some accessible country - real and metaphorical - beyond the boardwalks and the forest condominiums and the hunting reserves. I realised that what touched me most was not wilderness as a special, defined place, but the quality of wildness, Dylan Thomas's 'force that through the green fuse drives the flower', the untidy, energising edge of all living systems. True wildernesses must be defended at all costs, for the sake of their rightful inhabitants. But I felt that I could settle, like Thoreau and Colette, for just knowing they were there, and leave the real experience to my imagination. Our biggest challenge as a species is to work out a common area with nature, a hinterland where we can accept each other's company, and live out a relationship somewhere between the ten-day wilderness experience and the short stroll along a fenced trail. I thought about those spontaneous swamps by the Newark railroad, about the turkey-vultures outside our window, and wondered if they weren't just as invigoratingly wild as anything we might have seen in the Great Dismal Swamp.'

[Marianna Mullarkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a suggestion from our book group. I picked the book up a number of times and then put it down again. It felt like reading a paper about nature wrtiting (other writers) as opposed to someone enjoying actual nature. The author didn't consider that a new reader might be coming to his writing and so supposed that we knew his history and previous successes with writing nature books. Also I'm a stickler about unreliable narrators, especially ones that write in the first person. Why did he have to sell his house? Why so little money at this late stage of life of a successful author? Was depression brought on by the breakdown of his marriage? Was he to blame? All of these questions weren't answered. Just the last part of the book when he wrote a bit about cats made slogging through this book worthwhile.

[Ryan Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding biographical book. Mabay discloses his approach to nurturing a relationship with nature and the landscape, how it helped him process his sense of self post-depression, and how we as humans can better frame ourselves as part of the natural world rather than as its overlords. Botany, Birds, and Beechwood. The book emphasises the importance of 'sentimental magic' and a more vernacular approach to formulating our thoughts and experience of 'wildness' as opposed to a more scientific rigor (not that it doesn't have a place).

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting journey of someone pulling themselves (with help) out of their depression by emersing themselves into the natural world. He describes well the smallest aspects of nature and the elements as well but sometimes I can almost sense that he is still somewhat depressed. I'd have liked to give it another half star or so but I did find he meandered off trail, so to speak, quite often. Still, a good read.

[Amelia Marriette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that helped me to realise that I was not imagining that I was feeling better because I suddenly exposed myself to nature - it was true and Richard Mabey helped me to find the vocabulary to express my new-found contentment.

[Rebecca Shtasel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me realise quite what a townie I am. The author's deep awareness of the natural world revealed to me what a shallow understanding I have of the countryside. His beautiful, often playful, descriptions had me desperate to go out and see things through his eyes. A really lovely read.

[Annetten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stark trea. Behållningen blir till slut ändå de stiliga naturskildringarna.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve dipped in and out of this book, each time picking it up and felt wrapped in a comfortable blanket of nature.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was slightly disappointed by this as I thought it was going to be a book centred on RM's recovery from his depression and, more importantly, how nature brought about a cure. In fact, his descent into a morbid torpor, and fleeting treatment by a professional, fill only 20 pages or so. The basis for the breakdown is never fully explored. But it appears to have been at least partially self-inflicted since he decided, one winter in mid-writer's-block, to hole up by himself in a friend's old, draughty, rambling house, standing on its own in an area of Norfolk that's notoriously flat, windy and featureless. And wet. His only companions were a cat or two and his many, many books. Night after night alone there took its toll, as it would on anyone.
I gleaned that he's an aesthete, delicate of nature, intellectual, only barely out of his childhood home in his 30s (?), and something of a confirmed, and fussy, bachelor. "I was a scrap of nomadic tissue, a kind of mobile epiphyte—an organism without its own roots—living on the land rather than in it, and letting others bother about my infrastructure." (p.10). He's lucky so many people are kind to him, one lending the house (he manages to fall out with her), others taking in him and entertaining him after the breakdown. Finally, he hooks up with a woman called Polly who seems to suit him well (she makes homemade bread, is able to sail in North Norfolk's waters, and shares his delight in nature). By the final pages, after being occasionally dazzled by his lovely descriptions of birds and natural phenomena, I found him an very odd cove. Perhaps I was partial, though, irritated by the fact that he preferred Norfolk's drab flatlands to its utterly beautiful coastline, where I hail from. If, like Mabey, you are fascinated by all living things, birds in particular, and even the most obscure fenland plant, then this will prove full of delights. I have a feeling the nature-based chapters, varied as they are and full of some fascinating historical details, were put together from a regular newspaper column or something similar and the 'cure' bit was later inserted.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Mabey is an extraordinary nature writer with an ability to interest the non specialist and the specialist alike. Haven been given this book by a friend to read, I thought it not too promising, the writers own depression of a deep and profound kind and the nature of the Norfolk Suffolk Borderlands, a pretty but unspectacular part of the world.

With the prejudice of a native Norfolk Dumpling I thought Mabey a "foreigner" from the faraway Chilterns was bound to get it all wrong. How wrong I was. The constantly changing Norfolk landscape and wildlife is recorded with an acutely observant eye. Indeed it is one of the best books, if not the best book about the Norfolk Landscape that I have read. Time and again I thought. Yes he has really got this or that right.

Even the depression theme is interesting.Richard Mabey observes his illness with a scientists eye. Despite the extremely painful nature of his affliction he behaves with dignity and composure. The successive stages of his recovery leave one with a feeling of sympathy and pleasure at his surmounting of one obstacle after another.

The contrast between the serene Norfolk Landscape and the hell which he had to endure during his illness produces an odd but electrifying aesthetic effect in the reader, not the Romantic Sublime but a kind of Postmodern version of it, gentle landscape in contrast to a terrifying mental effect.

[Colette · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. The author’s conclusions saved this book; almost to the point of 3 stars. I think if I reread this now, knowing the point, I would get a lot more out of it. Nature Cure didn’t seem to have any real theme until the very end. If the conclusion had been laid out in the beginning I would have better understood where all these stories were headed. As it was, I frequently got bored because there seemed to be no trajectory. In the final pages we are told that the author’s year of exploring nature in the midst of a major depression was not about getting out into nature, but letting nature into him. He learned how to move between nature and man-made society.

I especially liked what he said right toward the end (pages 225-226):

“We badly need to find ways of juggling that simultaneous existence in our own world and in nature’s. ... To Blackie [the cat] such crossing-over is second nature. ... She and her kind are not wild animals, and have no real role in the negotiation we have to work out with nature. Yet cats seem to me to be messengers. Their effortless passing between the wild and domestic worlds suggests the kind of grace we need as a species to move between nature and culture.”

Another thing that probably made a difference for me was that I have not got a lot of experience with any of the species talked about in this book. I imagine someone who has experienced England’s flora, fauna, seasons, geology, and landscapes would connect more with this writing.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to read this book because it's an example of the erudite, densely-written, somewhat personally reticent approach to nature writing. The author, one of Britain's foremost experts on nature, describes a period in his life when he fell into a depression and ended up having to leave his familiar home and stay with friends in the agricultural flatlands of East Anglia. There was a lot of value in this book, and I especially enjoyed the author's descriptions of looking for the remains of wetlands in his new territory, with descriptions of how the Enclosure movement of the 1700s completely transformed the landscape. As I happen to live in another region where industrialized agriculture has turned a once beautiful and infinitely complex environment into a paltry shadow of what it used to be--central Illinois, in my case--I was very interested in the comparison. Mabey is at his best when describing his own first hand forays into nature and dealing with his own depression, but all too often, he immediately branched off into a rather dry and academic discussion of the subject. Overall, a good addition to the shelves of serious naturalists, but not my first choice on the subject.

[Sophy H · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only way I can describe this book is truly beautiful.

Richard Mabey reveals the experience behind a crippling depression he suffered some years ago, and how nature, his usual passion, initially failed to reignite his tortured soul.

The writing is honest, forthright, tender yet enthralling.

His reestablished passion shines through on each and every page.

Much loved book and highly recommended.

**Re-read in Autumn 2022, still highly resonates with me. Remains a beautiful read**

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn’t get into this at all which surprised and disappointed me as I love being out in the countryside and, before I read it, thought it would be a subject and a book I would really ‘get’. Alas no. The tone at the start made me read it as if I were reading aloud to an audience and I got more focused on that than the actual content. I gave up before I got half way 🙁 which in itself was disappointing as I had great hopes for the book.

[Salli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gentle romp through nature with a thoroughly lovely author recovering from depression. made all the more intersting becuase I know the areas he writes about. In some ways as much a finding yourself piece as any femenist piece on living without men. Warm and comfortable, a cure for any cold winter day.

[Alex Klaushofer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book, and have returned to it several times since reading it a few years ago, especially because the problem that starts it is counter-intuitive - that stability and rootedness in place can engender depression.

[Ruthiella · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bits and pieces were lovely, but as a whole I found it a meandering and unfocussed memoir. Is it about recovering from depression, ecological history, living green? It is all these and none of them. It doesn't help that I am mostly unfamiliar with the flora and fauna of which Mabey waxes.

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not enough flow to this read for me. I was sucked in, then grew bored, over and over. At least this ensured I finished the book, but I would have liked my attention to be more sustained.

[Sue Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful and very healing.