Bog Myrtle & Peat

After several years of writing this blog, I was beginning to feel like I’d made some progress. Working for Grouse had become a substantial piece of work, and it was a pleasure for me to sift through that back-catalogue of records and notes which spanned more than a decade. I believe that there’s sufficient material in Galloway to fill a century of journals and diary entries, but I also began to worry that simply recording my days was only part of the picture.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time working inside a genre called “nature writing”. That wasn’t a conscious decision, but since my book Native was published in April, it was interesting to see where that label placed me on a map alongside other writers. I was a little uncomfortable with what I found. I’ve often struggled to connect with “nature writing”, which can lean towards some fairly staid and cosy principles. More often than not, the countryside is represented as a fragile but restorative escape from the hectic reality of urban life. Nothing could be further from my experience of living and working in the hills of southern Scotland.

And while I’ve made snooty complaints about “nature writing”, that genre has expressed similar discomfort about me. I don’t really belong. I’m reckoned to be one of the “bad guys” because I used to work as a gamekeeper. Those nasty old habits die hard, because I still shoot guns, set traps and burn heather as part of a farming life which can be staggeringly immersive.

In seeking to write well and honestly about my experience of Galloway, it’s been jarring to find that many readers consider my approach to be obscure or offensive. That was never my intention; I’m not here to court controversy or start arguments. I started to write this blog because I was excited by birds and wildlife. And now I’m beginning to see how those subjects tie into all of us and the experience of life itself. I’m desperate to approach these new angles with passion and clarity.

So while pushing on with some well-established threads of this blog, I’d also like to go outside the normal flow. I was tempted to convert Working for Grouse into a vehicle for grumblings and dissent. That would’ve been fun, but I think it might be more useful to focus upon subjects and ideas which I find inspiring and exciting. I’ve been writing reviews, stories and essays for several years. They’ve been abandoned on my computer, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be publishing this kind of stuff here. Perhaps it’ll seem disparate at first, but I hope that sharing it will help me to work out where I’m going.

Having found that my writing lacks an obvious home, I think it’s a fair response to make one.