The Nature of Winter
Jim Crumley
Saraband, £12.99
News that global warming might not be advancing quite as fast as we feared will come as cold comfort to Jim Crumley. In this, the sequel to The Nature of Autumn, he laments the gradual but remorseless end of winter in his own lifetime. The year he was born -1947- the snow in his hometown of Dundee was piled in the streets as high as "the upper decks of the trams and buses". Now, in his excursions into the Cairngorms, from where much of the material for this book comes, he often finds the days unseasonably warm, and what snow there is soon chased off by the sun.
In his case, such griping is not nostalgia but the result of close observation of the countryside across his seventy-year span.
As Crumley writes, in this most readable of nature notebooks, "winter is in the throes of becoming something other: something less wintry, something much less predictable, and something infinitely more adversarial". Crumley's inviting and informative, conversational style cannot hide his dismay at the speed of change. He is convinced that "the wild year will soon be measurable in three seasons – a spring that lasts from February to May, summer from June to September, and Autumn from October to January".
A prolific writer, Crumley has earned himself the enviable position of our foremost nature commentator at a time when the precarious survival of the wilds and its creatures is making more of us take heed. There is a rambling quality to this book, which roams from stake outs, in pursuit, say, of a glimpse of deer or swans, to reflections on past companions on his expeditions - it is dedicated to one of his much lamented friends – and in passing makes excoriating remarks upon the forestry industry or "so-called 'sporting' estates". Yet the lack of varnish in prose and structure work in his favour. This three-month immersion in a highland landscape unfolds at its own pace, and Crumley knows better than to force his subject to develop in any direction but its own path.
There is a homely, meditative quality to his thoughts which one suspects are the product of hours crouching in bracken and broom, waiting for a creature to appear in his sights. His is not an economical or snappy style, but it can be hypnotic, and if not precisely lyrical, despite many using that word of him, he is certainly evocative. The descriptions in these pages are drawn from experience and because of that they ring true.
Frequently referring to his nature writing trade, when he finds himself in the eagle's sights, he admits that such moments of mutual awareness "are among the most precious souvenirs that persuaded me many years ago now to dismiss the idea of climbing a mountain to pronounce it climbed, and to find a new way of my own in the mountain midst where I might meet and linger in the company of natives."
Thanks to that resolve, in his company we encounter the golden eagle, in perhaps the most bewitching of these chapters, but also the snow bunting, and the long-tailed tit. There is nothing macho about this observer, for whom a wren or a tiny red spider is counted as much a source of wonder as a sea eagle or stag.
As conflict over land use grows, it would be impossible to write about nature without a political edge. Crumley does so fearlessly, outspoken in his denunciations of those who appear not to care or know about the best interests of the wilds. Hence his return to one of his pet subjects, the reintroduction of the wolf. Many will not be convinced, but his arguments are unsentimental and persuasive. For support he draws for support on the likes of renowned American ecologist Aldo Leopoldo, who wrote towards the middle of last century: "I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer."
The political and environmental landscape are an essential component of the best nature writing, but what lingers most powerfully, for this reader at least, are the passages where one is frozen in place at Crumley's side, in a snell January wind, on the edge of the mountains, watching the middle distance for telltale movement. That's what makes this a true winter's tale.
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