I have a memory that I cannot clearly place. It was six or seven years ago and I was watching a segment on breakfast television about how many urban children cannot recognise well-known British wildlife by sight or sound.
I was one of those children. My summer holidays were spent at home, bored, under east London’s concrete canopy. Wildlife highlights were foxes and the odd rat, creatures to be feared because nature was unpredictable, and sometimes even perverse (viz, the common city pigeon, cannibalistically picking at discarded fried chicken bones).
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to unlearn that perspective. My eyes were opened by country friends at university who, shockingly, never came back from summer having been trampled by a cow. I have since pored over documentaries, visited nature centres and been trekking. I figured if the mountain would not come to me, I would go to the mountain.
So I was crushed when, after watching the TV segment, I took the same nature test as the children, only to fail. I could not identify a weasel and thought samphire was an app. I still knew nothing. I wondered if it was too late.
This week I feel differently. My West Country boyfriend’s family sent him a box of Cornwall fish for his birthday, which we identified online. I can recognise several fish. Stuck at home, our humble garden has become our world. If I sit still long enough, eventually the birds will hop on to the table. I recognise some chirps. I still want to scream when they wake me up with their incessant singing, but I know which bird I want to scream at.
Strange to think the most transformative module in my nature education took place in a city flat, but it turns out the mountain was there all along. The trick is to sit still enough to realise.
