nature boy
featured edit on Caught by the River or read the full piece here
‘Some of my earliest memories of Dad are of being woken at first light. Roused from slumber by the tinkling of steel on porcelain and a buttery waft of toast from the kitchen. Afterwards, being bundled into the left hand drive, pea green Mark 1 Escort, swaddled in a blanket until the engine got warm enough to generate heat. We would drive through silent streets to the sounds of Django Reinhardt and Jose Feliciano. Street lamps still orange, aglow. Flask and foil wrapped sandwiches in back.
Hide ready’.
Flicking through the delicate pages, it took me back to a place that he took me as a child and the realisation that legacies are more than just trinkets. They can be treasuries of knowledge and a love of life and nature and birds that are passed down, that help keep a person alive long after they have passed away. They are experiences that shaped a person and that person shaped another person. Me.
Set against the backdrop of where my dad lived on the banks of the Aire and Calder Navigation and where I used to live, on the Leeds and Liverpool canal. It is a finely woven piece that explores the cycle of things. The idea of history repeating in a familial, environmental and a generational cycle. It comments on how modern life is hurried and many people fail to notice the natural world around them and how this could benefit their mental wellbeing.
The title of the piece is taken from the song written by Eden Ahbez, which has always felt synonymous with my dad. Various renditions were part of our soundtrack growing up and the lyrics aptly reminiscent of his solitary explorations of the towpath, fields and woodland.
It also touches on the Covid pandemic, and how out of tragedy and enforced lockdown, there was actually a visible increase in wildlife and an appreciation of the outdoors. In particular on the stretch of canal and river where I lived in Leeds.
Part tribute to my dad who passed in 2012, Nature Boy was born from the rediscovery of my dad’s birding scrapbook; repurposed from an old maths book from his school year in 1948. It took me on a journey back to my earliest memories of him, waking me at first light to go birdwatching at Fairburn Ings. I began tracing the origins of his passion for birds and nature and realised how it had helped him as a young boy to escape the difficulties of living with a bipolar father. It then dawned, that this inherited love had also helped me cope with the pressures of growing up with a bipolar father and in later years, supported my own recovery from depression.