NATURE-WRITING AWARD

For our our inaugural competition, hundreds of budding nature writers, aged from nine to 90, supplied beautiful entries written with passion and skill. Joe Pontin reflects on the themes explored by a talented field, and introduces the winner

Hundreds of you sent in beautiful entries for our inaugural nature-writing competition. Read the winning story.

The outdoors calls to many of us. It’s the place we feel free, where many of us find peace – and never more so than in the lockdowns of the past 18 months. The pandemic has been traumatic for the country in many ways. In our suffering, though, we at last found something in common as a nation, after the bitterness and division that has dominated the past few years. Trapped at home, we all craved escape.

We yearned for open spaces. Young, old, male, female, black, white, Leaver, Remainer – whatever our politics or demographic, we cherished our limited freedom to exercise, leaving our homes in millions to tramp footpaths through urban parks, city edges and village margins. There we found solace in nature: the sun on our faces, the scent of cherry blossom, the song of a blackbird.

The theme of our first New Nature Writer of the Year competition, Escape to Nature, allowed budding writers to explore these feelings of connection between our sense of freedom and wild open places. We had urged entrants, as William Wordsworth put it, to “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart”, something all the writers took seriously, as each entry was heartfelt, and many were vividly emotive.

There were startling moments of intimacy with the wild, when you locked gaze with a deer, a fox or a hare. Moments of reflection, when you found something in yourselves that you had never known, or that you had forgotten. In particular, the passage of time was on your minds; some of you ruminated nostalgically on a newly rediscovered love for nature that had lain dormant since childhood. For many of the writers, loss was a theme, especially bereavement – unsurprisingly, in a year when so many of us parted with loved ones. As a judge, I can report that the cumulative experience of reading hundreds of such passionate entries had a powerful effect. More than once, I shed tears. This made the process of shortlisting difficult. We became attached to your stories, and many, many of those that did not quite make our shortlist were insightful, touching and original.

Fortunately in considering an overall winner from the shortlist of 20, I was joined by three exceptionally talented nature writers: Stephen Moss, Katharine Norbury and Anita Sethi.

Together, the judges chose a winner that we felt fulfilled the brief most satisfyingly: to describe an aspect of the natural world that the entrant had witnessed in person; to evoke a vivid atmosphere and a strong sense of place; to describe the effect of this experience of the natural world. Entries were anonymised to ensure impartiality.

THE WINNER

In a crowded field, the winning entry, published in full overleaf, was an early front-runner. Judge Katharine Norbury described Caro Fentiman’s piece as: “A multi-sensory experience of the natural world, which invites the reader to become both companion and witness in a timeless account of the power of the sea.” So without further ado, turn the page to read our winning entry…

• Who else won? See the list of runners-up and highly commended entries at countryfile.com.

• Read our runners-up in the October and November issues.