The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future

(Hardback)

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Description

Summer is traditionally a time of plenty, of warmth, of breeding; a time to celebrate the abundance of nature teeming in our hedgerows, cities, marshlands and woodlands. But in the twenty-first century, summer is becoming harder to define. The changing climate is bleeding our traditional distinctions into one another. Last February held days as warm as August. Or was it the other way around

Against the anxious backdrop of the global pandemic, Stephen Rutt seeks comfort and reassurance from nature in full bloom. But within his evocative exploration of the landscapes and wildlife that characterise the British summer, he also notes the disturbance to the traditional rhythms of the natural world: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time, the disruption to habitats and breeding, the myriad ways climate change is causing a derangement of the seasons.

The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and an observation of the delicate series of disorientations that we may not notice while some birds still sing, while nature still has some voice, but that may be forever changing our perception of summer.

Reviews

Immediate and transporting a species-by-species picnic of an unfolding Summer The role of a Nature writer is to tread a tightrope... They must show us the marvel and wonder, but they must also tell us of the losses and risks in a world of climate chaos and habitat erosion... Rutt treads this fine line just right the tone is hopeful, nostalgic and poignant. Kate Blincoe, Resurgence & Ecologist

Author Bio

Stephen Rutt is an award-winning writer, birder and book reviewer whose work has appeared in the Guardian Country Diary, EarthLines Magazine, Zoomorphic, The Harrier, Surfbirds and BirdGuides. He is author of The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds, which won the Saltire First Book of the Year in 2019, a Roger Deakin Award and was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2019 and, most recently, Wintering: A Season with Geese. Stephen currently lives in Dumfries.