Life in South Leeds
I have lived in South Leeds all my life, so feel rooted to this area. Yet I never really noticed the plants, trees, birds and other life forms that live alongside me. For years I have not paid attention to what is right in front of me. The landscape around me has just been a backdrop to my thoughts, or something I pass through on the way to somewhere else. So what exactly have I been rooted to all these years?
I grew up in Hunslet about three miles South from Leeds City Centre. As a child nature was something you felt close to on trips to the countryside or during holidays at Whitby, Sandsend and Robin Hood’s Bay.
Now in my fifth decade, I realise how little attention I have given to nature (what David Abram calls the more-than-human world). I don’t know the names of the flora and fauna of this area. Instead I just know generic terms, trees, flowers and weeds. I don’t want to know about nature in a scientific way, since that is not what calls me. Instead I am more drawn to the sensations, the feelings and experiences of being in the local landscape.
A lot of nature and travel writes tend to be men, Richard Mabey, Robert MacFarlane and Roger Deakin spring to mind. However, when I started to delve into these genres, I found some women writers such as Nan Shepherd and Rebecca Solnitt. Inspired by these writers, something has stirred within me. I want to know more about the local flora and fauna, not so I can write about them through labelling. Rather I want to find more precise ways of describing my encounters with the world around me, the landscape I encounter every day.
I begin to recognise the variety of weeds that can be found on the streets and fields in the area, groundsel, shepherds purse, speedwell, creeping purple thistles and red clover.
I grew up in Hunslet about three miles South from Leeds City Centre. As a child nature was something you felt close to on trips to the countryside or during holidays at Whitby, Sandsend and Robin Hood’s Bay.
Now in my fifth decade, I realise how little attention I have given to nature (what David Abram calls the more-than-human world). I don’t know the names of the flora and fauna of this area. Instead I just know generic terms, trees, flowers and weeds. I don’t want to know about nature in a scientific way, since that is not what calls me. Instead I am more drawn to the sensations, the feelings and experiences of being in the local landscape.
A lot of nature and travel writes tend to be men, Richard Mabey, Robert MacFarlane and Roger Deakin spring to mind. However, when I started to delve into these genres, I found some women writers such as Nan Shepherd and Rebecca Solnitt. Inspired by these writers, something has stirred within me. I want to know more about the local flora and fauna, not so I can write about them through labelling. Rather I want to find more precise ways of describing my encounters with the world around me, the landscape I encounter every day.
I begin to recognise the variety of weeds that can be found on the streets and fields in the area, groundsel, shepherds purse, speedwell, creeping purple thistles and red clover.
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