Field Notes from the Edge by Dr. Paul Evans is one of my all time favourite pieces of nature writing. First published by Rider, part of Penguin Publishing in 2015 it is a wonderful collection of observations on nature, landscape, history and folklore.

Paul Evans is perhaps best known as a regular contributor to The Guardian’s Country Diary column. He is also the author of Herbaceous and How to See Nature. He brilliantly combines a close study of nature with history, literature and folklore and shows how all of these are interwoven with each other.

Reading this book has had a profound impact influence on me and how I see the landscape around me. Evans sees ancestral footfall in all of his walks, the connections nature has with our past and how they can act as a conduit between them and now.

The influence of Robert Graves and in particular his seminal book The White Goddess is not lost on the reader. Graves was a keen student of the ancient Celtic tree language known as the Ogham as well as a belief in ancient goddess worship. Evans ponders on Graves’ belief that analeptic thought can transport one back to a specific time and as far back as the time of the Neanderthal? Evans takes this a step further pondering the Jackdaw as a vehicle for analeptic thought. Whatever one’s thoughts are it is testament to how Evans mediates on nature and sees the endless possibilities its creatures pose for us to consider.

This is a book of edgelands and crossing points; roads, rivers, old tracks and thresholds. His point of not looking for wilderness but for the wild to find him is well made. We spend all of time in search of something but seldom stand and be. What is on our very doorstep can be remarkable, from a wild flower emerging from the cracks of a roadside kerb to a swift crossing oceans to nest under our eaves once again. There is this secret wilderness under our feet and it’s all there for the observing.