Out of the Mouths of Babes

a post for Earth Day

As a child I was allowed to run wild. This was perhaps strange as my mother was a worrier, but she also liked us being out of the house for as much of the day as possible. (She was more anxious about the state of her carpets than skinned knees and bloodied noses.) In any case, we were safe. We lived in suburbia where there were few cars and our “adventures” took place on a nearby patch of undeveloped land which we nicknamed “the Woods”. There were small trees which we climbed; we could make camps, light fires and cook sausages, make dams and float our paper boats in the muddy trickle of a stream. Inevitably we got into scrapes, but there was always a friend to help - or to run and fetch a grown-up. (One of the benefits of a quiet suburban childhood was that even though we children thought we were free from an adult’s watchful eye, there was always a neighbour who knew exactly what we were up to…)

This was the 1970s, a period which had its own problems as all periods of history do, but nevertheless an optimistic time for our natural environment when children were encouraged to play outside and learn about animals, birds, trees, flowers and insects. Earth Day, 22^nd April, was dreamt up in 1970 - the year I was born. Senator Gaylord Nelson, an American politician, decreed that it was important to have a day on which children should be taught about the environment in schools. Today (if they have returned after the Spring break) many schools will mark Earth Day by getting involved in local clean-ups in their streets, parks and along rivers and coasts.

I must admit that I didn’t know about Earth Day (or had forgotten) until my son Tom told me about it when he was at junior school. Tom was always coming home from school with information “about Nature”, and it’s Tom I have to credit with rekindling my own relationship with the natural world. I had spent too long in cities between the ages of 18 and 30 and had forgotten how to run wild. Tom cured me of this.

From as far back as I can remember he was captivated by his natural environment. One of his first words was “butterfly” - although he pronounced it “flutter-die” which seems somehow more appropriate for these fragile creatures. He would repeat the word, pointing at a butterfly and tracking its movements across the garden. Later in childhood he became obsessed with BBC Springwatch, asking for track cameras and moth traps, “grow your own” butterfly kits, bird boxes, and shelves and shelves of books about every animal under the sun. His dream was to go to Madagascar to see the lemurs and he worked and saved to go before heading off to university to study Natural Sciences.

Many of Tom’s obsessions have inspired my writing. My writing career began with publishing humorous books about our family’s pets, so animals were always in my stories, but when Tom’s natural history passion developed, I was inexorably drawn into his world, realising that I had been walking around with my eyes shut since becoming an adult. When I cleared out my childhood home after my parents died, I saw that I too had once had shelves and shelves of books about animals, birds and insects. I had even been a member of the Young Ornithologists’ Club in the 1970s.

Tom taught me to recognise birds again, to sit still long enough to watch baby badgers foraging in our garden at dusk, to treat spiders with respect and take them outside rather than hoovering them up. His passion took us to the Natural History Museum in London every holiday, and around wetlands, nature reserves, bird-ringing on the Malborough Downs, and even on safari to Botswana.

It’s thanks to seeing the world through Tom’s eyes that I was able to write several non-fiction books for the National Trust. A Story of the Seasons is my most recent.

I wanted to give Tom and his sister Lucy a childhood as close to mine as possible. We moved to the countryside when they were toddlers, and from an early age they were clambering along branches and enjoying swimming in the sea. When they were responsible enough I let them light camp fires. They never fell out of a tree or burnt themselves. The worst accidents we had involved the trampoline which I could see from the kitchen window.

My biggest fear for my kids, aside from access to the countryside in an increasingly urban planet, is how the Earth will look when they have their own children. In Tom’s lifetime alone we have already a 60% decrease in the UK population of flying insects. This has of course had a knock-on effect for other species, not least the beautiful swallows, swifts and house martins which have just arrived on our shores after their long migrations from the southern hemisphere.

I am hugely grateful to Tom for reminding me to always look at the natural world in awe, and for teaching me how I can do my bit to help look after the planet, whether it’s in making different choices around food, travel and cleaning products, or writing about the natural world in the hope I inspire others to love it as much as we do.

Wherever you are today, I hope you can find the time to get out and look up in wonder. Happy Earth Day!