Burrowed wisdom

Being a Beast is an impassioned and proselytising work of philosophy based on a spectacular approach to nature writing. That genre has given us riches on the language of landscape, the redemptive power of goshawks and the lives of fields, rooks, butterflies et al. We are wealthier for the movement, but in none of many beautiful books will you find a passage like this, from a writer in a wood at dusk thinking about badgers.

It would be pointless to reel off the adjectives and metaphors I used to describe to myself the scent of shepherd’s purse on the pillow or dog’s mercury in the wood. That might say something about me, but nothing about badgers or woods. Do badgers use adjectives? I expect they describe the world to themselves, and so they must. Adjectives are a corollary of fine shades of perception.

Farewell most nature writing:

Anyone who tries to evoke the mood of a natural place is a fraud; it is all — all — in the particular; the detail; the slash, the wrench, the individual panting breath.