Natural connections

Mark Cocker’s broad overview of nature writing (Wild Words, November 2017) pointed me towards a number of titles that haven’t yet made it onto my bookshelf – I look forward to correcting this.

For me, his observation that we are “essentially a very urban people”, and his subsequent assertion that this provides an answer to the recent surge of interest in nature writing, triggered the greatest reflection.

There seems to be a longing within us to escape into the wild, and nature writing can provide this. However, nature needn’t be distant. Cocker mentioned works about ‘edgelands’, which are often far more akin to most people’s everyday reality.

Ben Eagle, nr Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex