Paul Evans nature writer,
Guardian Country Diarist, poet,
broadcaster, journalist, senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Country diary: new snow lay on wings of fungi
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: The one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance between winter and spring had time yet but many of the animals and plants had not
Overnight snow left anonymous gifts. Frost and a chill wind through the trees hardened what remained of the snowfall as the weather moved on, to leave a scattering of unopened envelopes. Snow on fungi: there was something very symbolic about these two kinds of ephemeral structures. The Armilaria fungi living in the rotten stump of a tree may have been what killed it. The fruiting bodies of russet flesh that bloomed from fibrous mycelium, forming a circuit between tree cells and a kind of organic afterlife in the soil, were now holding a frozen package of snow.
After days of sogginess with bright moments, the return of snow felt revenant. It was too clear and pure, even in its fleetingness. In Among the Summer Snows, Christopher Nicholson talked about the literary obsession with the whiteness of snow and quoted Shakespeare when Juliet declares that Romeo “wilt lie upon the wings of night/ Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back”. Love transcends death, or something.....
Country Diary 2018
Guardain Country Diary 2017
Guardain Country Diary 2016
BOOKS
Paul Evans
Field Notes From The Edge
Journeys through Britain's Secret Wilderness
Paperback published 6 April 2017
A Times, Guardian and Independent
'BOOK OF THE YEAR'
Green Letters
Studies in Ecocriticism
Review: Field Notes from the Edge by Prof. Terry Gifford, poet & ecocritic
''From data to dream, from virus to vision, Field Notes from the Edge is not only the touchstone for future nature writers, it is, for readers, an exemplary and challenging reminder of why we should mitigate the Anthropocene from our own edgelands."
For more information or to read what other authors are saying about the book go to .....
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