Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
SPECIAL PRICE: Just £9.99 for your next 8 magazines
Subscribe today
Opinion

Lockdown lesson: Nature can lead you to a world full of wonder

The last few months have transformed our relationship with nature and it’s important to learn lessons from lockdown, says nature writer Stephen Rutt

A lesson I relearned in lockdown was to make do with what I had, instead of pursuing what I wanted. It sounds simple, yet it is something I have to keep relearning. 

It’s a lesson I first learned six years ago on North Ronaldsay, a tiny island in the Orkney archipelago, where I lived for seven months. A certain amount of restriction, it transpired, can breed resilience. The narrowing of horizons was merely refocusing, down to the details of the everyday. Those were among the happiest days of my life and I think it wasn’t just down to the scenery.

Lockdown was not: I was stranded away from home, across the country in Bedfordshire, in a family home, surrounded by wheat fields and lifeless woods. At first I was tempted to rage about it: I was, after all, supposed to be writing a book about summer wildlife and climate change. 

I had an interesting summer of wildlife to see that I had planned out meticulously, rare and exciting species that it would have been a thrill to spend time with. Now I had endless time and no subject, or so I thought.

Sign our petition to #StopMassHomelessness

Daily walks around the fields to the local wood saved me then. As well as tracking the progress of the season, as late winter resolved into an exceptional spring – it felt like the height of summer from early April – it kept me in touch with the world. I began to look deeper at what we had to hand, the drama and meaning of common species in humdrum habitats.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

What I thought were plain and boring landscapes were revealed to be full of excitement. Tracking daily the progression of the season became thrilling. Nature is everywhere and always changing. Being alive to its signs and presences is an amazing way of noticing what’s about, what’s happening where you are and when, in ways that are more organic than a map or calendar might tell you. 

This does take a bit of knowledge, though. If you don’t know, then remember this: that we are a part of nature and not separate from it. We all make do with the same light, the same time; there are few places a bird won’t venture in this country. Beginning to notice it can lead you into a world full of wonder.

Stephen Rutt’s latest book, The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers, Past Present and Future, is out now (Elliott & Thompson, £14.99)

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

READER-SUPPORTED SINCE 1991

Reader-supported journalism that doesn’t just report problems, it helps solve them.

Recommended for you

View all
Mental health support while I was in care wasn’t perfect – but now children are being turned away
Boy wearing backpack
Jack Smith

Mental health support while I was in care wasn’t perfect – but now children are being turned away

The fall of Angela Rayner emphasises the rise in power of property ownership
John Bird

The fall of Angela Rayner emphasises the rise in power of property ownership

What would Britain be like with Donald Trump as prime minister?
Donald Trump
Your view

What would Britain be like with Donald Trump as prime minister?

Why throw away clothes? You could go to a repair cafe to get them fixed instead
A person mending clothes
John Rose

Why throw away clothes? You could go to a repair cafe to get them fixed instead

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payments: Where to get help in 2025 now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue