But I had used almost a litre of fuel to get here, it was low water slack and I was not going to give up yet. I crossed a small stream and stepped down onto the beach. The fragile sunlight lay on the sand like gold leaf. Over the water the haze of salt appeared to light up the sky. The rocks glistened, black, against the bright sea. I would enjoy the walk and search as far as I could before the tide shut the door.
I walked perhaps ten yards, then stopped. I had seen something blue sticking an inch or two from the sand. I stared at it stupidly for a moment. It looked like the top of my water bottle. I stared for a moment longer, as the cogs slowly clunked together and began to turn. It was the top of my water bottle. Around it, scarcely emerging from the sand, was a black lip of some kind. The basal ganglia registered the sight, but it seemed to take an age before the message bubbled up to the vaguely conscious sections of my brain. It was the flap of my fishing bag, wrapped around the bottle.
The chances of finding the bag were tiny. The chances of finding it within thirty seconds of stepping onto the beach were . . . 1 in 10,000? 100,000? 1 million? I dug round it like a dog and heaved it out. It was rammed full of sand, but the clips were still closed. It must have weighed half a hundredweight. I blinked at it, then I hauled it onto my back and staggered away. Water poured from the bag and down my legs.
At home I filled a galvanized dustbin with water and emptied the bag into it, then felt around in the sand–gingerly as I was mindful of the hooks–with the thrill of a child plunging his hand into a lucky dip. I began pulling out my belongings: first a reel, then a tangle of lures and line from which my camera dangled, then the other reel, then the smaller tackle. Everything was there.
The reels and the camera were seized up with sand. Over the next few days I dissected all three. Mending the reels was not too difficult, but the camera appeared to be dead. I shook half a handful of sand out of it, dried off the parts then reassembled it. There was no spark of life. I do not like throwing things away, so I left it on a shelf. Two weeks later, without a thought in my head, I picked it up and pressed the power switch. It flashed on then off again. I recharged the battery and tried again, with the same result. After another week, it came on for thirty seconds before shutting down again. Over the following two months it slowly revived, regaining another function every time I turned it on. By Christmas it was working perfectly.
15
Last Light
The Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does streight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green Thought in a green Shade.
Andrew Marvell
The Garden
I have one more thing to relate, and it is a small one. A few days after the albacore hunt, I finished work early and took my boat down to the sea for the last time that year. I had decided that I would leave Wales. Though the reasons were happy ones, the decision was edged with sadness.
It was a calmer day, although there was a long swell over the reef. I thumped through the waves, following distant gannets which dispersed long before I reached them, travelling a couple of miles out to sea before allowing the north wind to push me down the coast. After two hours without fish, I began to plod back, against both wind and waves. Were it not for the shipping buoy moving steadily past the distant houses as I paddled, I could have imagined I was merely stirring the viscous water. Then, as the sun began to sink, the wind dropped. At first the sea looked like the broken bottoms of wine bottles, each wave a conchoidal fracture. Soon, but for a slight residual swell, it fell flat. Now the boat, as if untethered, cut cleanly through the still water.
A few yards from the shore I wound up my line then sat without paddling, rocked by the incoming waves, watching the sun go down over Yr Eifl, many miles across the sea on Pen Lleyn. The mountain appeared to snag the star then to drag it down into the earth like an ant lion. A puff of indigo cloud, like cannon smoke, hung against a sheet of flaming cirrus.
I looked around the bay. Though the light was fading, I could see the whole crescent. To the south was the gently rising plateau of the Cambrian Desert, dissolving into the suggestion of Pembrokeshire, where a few lights now glimmered. Closer to where I sat, the yellow flanks of Cadair Idris still faintly glowed, richer in colour than they had been a moment ago. To the north were the peaks of Snowdonia, washed and blue at first then hardening as they swept towards the point at which the sun had set. The mountains of Pen Lleyn now towered out of the sea, every knot and cleft sharp against the dying light. Beyond them Ynys Enlli, whale-backed, rode the still water.
I thought of the places I would be leaving, of what they were and what they could become. I pictured trees returning to the bare slopes, fish and whales returning to the bay. I thought of what my children and grandchildren might find here, and of how those who worked the land and sea might prosper if this wild vision were to be realized. I thought of how, across these five years, my exploration of nature’s capacity to regenerate itself, of the potential for wildlife to return to the places from which it had been purged, had enriched my own life. Wherever I went, I would take the wild life with me. I would devote much of my life to seeking out or helping to create places where I could hear again that high exhilarating note to which I had for so long been deaf, where I could find that rare and precious substance, hope. The black silhouettes of redshank and oystercatchers piped home along the shore. To the south, moonlight glittered on the water, now grooved like a linocut.
From behind me came a noise like a boot being pulled out of the mud. I turned, but all I saw was a large round ripple, as if a monstrous trout had sucked down a fly. Then a fin rose from the lavender sea, five or ten yards away. It sank again then rose beside me. It was a baby: one of last year’s dolphin calves. It circled the boat, so close that it almost nudged my paddle, then disappeared into the darkness.
Notes
PREFACE
1. Candice Berner, in Alaska on 8 March 2010. http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/news/pdfs/wolfattackfatality.pdf.
2. The cause of a second death, that of Kenton Joel Carnegie in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 2005, is disputed. The evidence appears to suggest that it is more likely that he was killed by a bear.
3. http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2005/06/29/are-vending-machines-deadlier-thansharks-repost.htm.
4. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/dangerous-cows/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.
5. http://historylist.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/human-deaths-in-the-us-caused-by-animals/.
6. http://www.videojug.com/interview/unlikely-ways-to-die#how-many-people-havedied-from-toothpicks.
7. Adam Welz, 17 May 2013, ‘Bloodthirsty “factual” TV shows demonize wildlife’, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/nature-up/2013/may/17/bloodthirtsty-wildlife-documentaries-reality-ethics.
8. Adam Welz, as above.
9. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/whale-attacked-by-megalodon.htm.
10. Breeanna Hare, 9 August 2013, ‘Discovery Channel defends dramatized shark special Megalodon’, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/07/showbiz/tv/discovery-shark-week-megalodon/.
11. http://www.idahoforwildlife.com/2-content/39-salmon-predator-derby.
12. John S. Adams, 10 December 2013, ‘Pet malamute shot, killed by wolf hunter’, USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/10/pet-malamute-killed-by-wolf-hunter/3950523/.
13. Dave Foreman, 2004, Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century, Island Press, Washington DC.
14. Ibid.
15. Adam Federman, 2013, ‘Return of the Wild: Will humans make way for the greatest conservation experiment in centuries?’, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/return_of_the_wild/.
INTRODUCTION
1. Fred Pearce, 16 September 1996, ‘The Grand Banks: Where Have All the Cod Gone?’, New Sci
entist.
2. Lori Waters, 11 January 2013, ‘Enbridge deleted 1000 km2+ of Douglas Channel Islands from route animations’, http://watersbiomedical.com/islands/jrp.html
3. Carol Linnitt, 13 April 2012, ‘Oil and Gas Industry Refused to Protect Caribou Habitat, Pushed for Wolf Cull Instead’, http://www.desmogblog.com/oil-and-gas-industry-refused-protect-caribou-habitat-pushed-wolf-cull-instead
4. Nature News, 29 June 2011, ‘Scat evidence exonerates wolves’, Nature, vol. 474, p. 545, doi:10.1038/474545d, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7353/full/474545d.html
5. Maggie Paquet, 2009, ‘Saving Caribou in BC’, Watershed Sentinel, vol. 19, no. 2, http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/saving-caribou-bc
6. The David Suzuki Foundation, 2010, ‘Protecting species that need it’, http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/wildlife-habitat/science/endangered-species-legislation/left-off-the-list-1/
7. Environment Canada, viewed 7 February 2013, Species at Risk Act, http://www.ec.gc.ca/alef-ewe/default.asp?lang=en&n=ED2FFC37-1
8. Nathan Vanderklippe, 16 May 2012, ‘Reviving Arctic oil rush, Ottawa to auction rights in massive area’, The Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/reviving-arctic-oil-rush-ottawa-to-auction-rights-in-massive-area/article4184419/
1. RAUCOUS SUMMER
* This term was coined by Jay Hansford Vest.7 It has been championed by Dr Mark Fisher, whose work has been influential in shaping this book.
1. J. G. Ballard, 2006, Kingdom Come, Fourth Estate, London.
2. Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.
3. T. S. Eliot, 1922, ‘The Waste Land’, Part 5.
4. Chambers, 12th edition.
5. Oliver Rackham, no date given, ‘Ancient forestry practices’, in Victor R. Squires (ed.), The Role of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Human Nutrition, vol. II, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems.
6. Dick Mol, John de Vos and Johannes van der Plicht, 2007, ‘The presence and extinction of Elephas antiquus Falconer and Cautley, 1847, in Europe’, Quaternary International, vols. 169–70, pp. 149–53.
7. ‘Will-of-the-Land: Wilderness among Primal Indo-Europeans’, Environmental Review, Winter 1985, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 323–9.
8. George Byron, 1818, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, Verse 178.
9. Christopher Smith, 1992, ‘The population of Mesolithic Britain’, Mesolithic Miscellany, vol. 13, no. 1.
10. Ibid. Smith estimates that Britain, towards the end of the Mesolithic, covered 270,000 km2. The land area diminished as sea levels rose (it now stands at 230,000 km2).
2. THE WILD HUNT
1. Severin Carrell, 24 February 2012, ‘Fishing skippers and factory fined nearly £1m for illegal catches’, Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/24/fishing-skippers-fined-illegal-catches
2. See George Monbiot, 8 August 2011, ‘Mutually assured depletion’, http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/08mutually-assured-depletion/
3. Lewis Smith, 1 March 2011, ‘Spanish mackerel fleet penalised for quota-busting’, http://www.fish2fork.com/news-index/Spanish-mackerel-fleet-penalised-for-quota-busting.aspx
4. See Winston Evans, quoted on the Newquay site, The Seafood of Cardigan Bay, http://www.newquay-westwales.co.uk/seafood.htm
5. European Environment Agency, 2011, ‘State of commercial fish stocks in North East Atlantic and Baltic Sea’, http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/state-of-commercial-fish-stocks-in-n-e-atlantic-and-baltic-sea-in
3. FORESHADOWINGS
*1 Picking up an animal that has died of natural causes and taking it home is a foolish thing to do: when I phoned a veterinary surgeon I know to ask if I could eat the deer, he told me to bury it.
*2 180 feet or 55 metres.
1. Christopher Mitchelmore, 2010, ‘Newfoundland & Labrador cod fishery’, http://liveruralnl.com/2010/07/17/newfoundland-labrador-cod-fishery/
2. Martin Bell, 2007, Prehistoric Coastal Communities: The Mesolithic in Western Britain. CBA Research Report 149, Council for British Archaeology.
3. Ibid.
4. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, 2009, The Great Crane Project, http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/greatcraneproject/project.aspx
5. BBC, 3 September 2009, ‘Cranes to breed on the levels’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8235000/8235479.stm
6. Bell, Prehistoric Coastal Communities.
7. Ibid.
4. ELOPEMENT
1. Benjamin Franklin, 9 May 1753, ‘The support of the poor’, letter to Peter Collinson, http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf2/letter18.htm
2. George Percy, quoted by David E. Stannard, 1992, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World, Oxford University Press, New York.
3. J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur, 1785, Letters from an American Farmer and Other Essays. Letter 12, edited by Dennis D. Moore, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
5. THE NEVER-SPOTTED LEOPARD
*1 Finding myself in South Africa soon after reading Bruce Chatwin’s famous account, I asked a curator at the Transvaal Museum to show me the skulls of Dinofelis, the false sabretooth cat, and those of the hominids on which it is believed to have preyed, punctured, just above the spinal column, by its massive canines. They were just as Chatwin described them in The Songlines.
*2 Moat’s story–and the strange public response–recapitulates that of Harry Roberts, the armed robber and sadistic murderer of prisoners during late colonial wars, who went on the run in 1966 after shooting dead two policemen. He hid in the woods for ninety-six days before he was captured. Like Moat, this revolting man was celebrated by some people as a folk hero.
1. Sion Morgan, 12 December 2010, ‘Pembrokeshire “panther” strikes again’, Wales On Sunday, http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/12/12/pembrokeshire-panther-strikes-again-91466–27810028/
2. Ibid.
3. Mark Lingard, 29 January 2011, ‘Big cat sighting in west Wales “100% authentic”’, County Times.
4. Translation by Robert Williams, http://www.mythiccrossroads.com/PaGur.htm
5. Merrily Harpur, 2006, Mystery Big Cats, Heart of Albion, Market Harborough.
6. Mark Kinver, 30 October 2008, ‘Snow leopard wins top photo prize’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/sci/tech/7696188.stm
7. Harpur, Mystery Big Cats.
8. S. J. Baker and C. J. Wilson, 1995, The Evidence for the Presence of Large Exotic Cats in the Bodmin Area and their Possible Impact on Livestock, a report by ADAS on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/exoticcats_tcm6-4645.pdf
9. No named author, 25 January 2010, ‘Is the big cat mystery finally solved? Villagers find huge paw prints in snow after 30 years of sightings’, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245816/Is-big-cat-mystery-solved-Villagers-huge-paw-prints-snow-30-years-sightings.html
10. No named author, 10 January 2011, ‘Do giant paw prints mean big cat is on the prowl in capital?’, Scotsman, http://www.scotsman.com/news/do-giant-paw-prints-mean-big-cat-is-on-the-prowl-in-capital-1-1489992
11. Patrick Barkham, 23 March 2005, ‘Fear stalks the streets of Sydenham after resident is attacked by a black cat the size of a labrador’, Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/mar/23/patrickbarkham
12. BBC, 22 March 2005, ‘“Big cat” attacks man in garden’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4370893.stm
13. Paul Harris, 9 January 2009, ‘Is this the Beast of Exmoor? Body of mystery animal washes up on beach’, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1109174/Is-Beast-Exmoor-Body-mystery-animal-washes-beach.html
14. David Hambling, 2001, ‘How big is an alien big cat?’, The Skeptic, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 8–11.
15. Richard Wiseman, 2011, Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There, Macmillan, London.
16. See, for example: Dominic Sandbrook, 17 July 2010, ‘A perfect folk hero for our times’, Daily Mail, http://www.dai
lymail.co.uk/debate/article-1295459/A-perfect-folk-hero-times-Moat-popularity-reflects-societys-warped-values.html; Emily Andrews, Daniel Martin and Paul Sims, 16 July 2010, ‘I set up the Moat Facebook tributes: the single mother behind twisted online shrine’, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295141/Siobhan-ODowd-set-Raoul-Moat-Face book-tribute-site.html; John Demetriou, 16 July 2010, ‘Raoul Moat: sympathy for the devil?’, http://www.boatangdemetriou.com/2010/07/raoul-moat-sympathy-for-devil.html
6. GREENING THE DESERT
*1 Fridd is the land between the enclosed fields of the valley bottoms and the open moor at the top of the hills. It tends to cover the steep slopes of the hillsides and to be dominated by scrub and bracken.
†2 Unless it was the municipal rubbish dump!
*3 Nutrients are lost as animals are removed from the land for consumption in other places, and as soil is leached or stripped by erosion.
*4 Since 1924, there have been 161 reintroductions of beavers in Europe.19
*5 The European red deer, Cervus elaphus, and the North American elk, Cervus canadensis, are so closely related that until 2004 they were believed to be the same species.
*6 Mammoths might have been made more susceptible to extinction through hunting by the simultaneous shrinkage of their habitat. One paper suggests that this caused a 90 per cent reduction in their geographical range between 42,000 and 6,000 years ago.48
1. www.cambrian-mountains.co.uk/
2. Graham Uney, 1999, The High Summits of Wales, Logaston Press, Hereford. Quoted by the Cambrian Mountains Society, http://www.cambrian-mountains.co.uk/documents/cambrian-mountains-sustainable-future-low-graphics.pdf
3. Fiona R. Grant, 2009, Analysis of a Peat Core from the Clwydian Hills, North Wales. Report produced for Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, http://www.rcahmw.gov.uk/media/193.pdf
4. Ibid.
5. See for example, R. Fyfe, 2007, ‘The importance of local-scale openness within regions dominated by closed woodland’, Journal of Quaternary Science, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 571–8, doi: 10.1002/jqs.1078; J. H. B. Birks, 2005, ‘Mind the gap: how open were European primeval forests?’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, vol. 20, pp. 154–6.
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