As a small child, before bed, I would sit on the fourth tread of our green carpeted stairs and gaze up at the hill through an old sash window. Along the ridge-top was a big, dark eyebrow shape, solid against a moving sky. I’d scan the darkness below for an eye, another, tracing a…

  Isle of Lewis, by me. “You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Their flight sets the boulevards streaming. And you know: he whom they flee is the one you move toward. All your senses sing him, as you stand at the window. The…

My daughter at WWT Rain Garden, London. Photo by me. (to be read bottom-upwards) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My essay at requisite Zoomorphic. Introducing Fluminism ~ protection & proliferation of wild processes, a vital form of love. https://twitter.com/zoomorphic/status/917305467080200192 https://twitter.com/zoomorphic/status/917306859308158976

Photo by me. The nights are drawing close here in Wales, and the earliest Autumnal tones cloak the hills to the South West of the city. From my top-floor flat, I have watched the deciduous Leckwith Woods green-up and brown-down. I remember all as a time-lapse scene, though winter is yet to come. From afar,…

  Circles dissipating on the lake define what it is to be a fish lunging for a brilliant sky, wishing to join others like oneself, in a vast ocean. GinnyB © 2012   ~~~~~~~~~

Photo by me. The Wye through trees. There are problems with the theory of Rights taking precedence over Responsibilities. Many indigenous people understand this. Rights are merely human constructs, legislatively fixed (when processes are not), but politically vulnerable and impressionable by further human culture/population dominion. Natural processes and fluministic interconnections have evolved, are evolving. There exists…

But in one of those ironies that mock human purposefulness, the harder people try to control wilderness – draining wetlands, burning forests, clearing mountainsides, paving meadows – the wilder the weather becomes. If people are looking for wilderness now, all they need to do is turn their faces to the sky. Kathleen Dean Moore (1999),…

The first day I moved into our new top-floor flat, a poorly rock dove landed on the balcony, waif-like with feathers broken and missing. His chest was nothing more than a wisp of grey smoke. His eyes were dull, and lumpy growths protruded from his matchstick feet. I thought he might die. Then again, I…

NASA NOAA39’s GOES satellite image   It’s 8 o’clock on Sunday morning and my phone alarm sounds a carefully chosen softly-softly chime to wake me up. I climb out of bed, stumble to my galley kitchen and click on the kettle. Ben sleeps cocooned by blankets on the sofa, and is dreaming as dogs do,…

Photo by me. Cortiform (latin bark/pattern) I have been trying to find a single word to describe all the variable characteristic features of bark including colour, texture, pattern/fissure, thickness, density and hardness. I couldn’t find one, so this is my #inventaword for today. Enjoy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Self Portrait Despite all effort to break the stigma of mental distress, some still assume some kind of weakness manifest as illness, limp or spent. What naivity! To the contrary, it takes deep fortitude sometimes just to endure each day. It takes steely courage sometimes just to ask for help. Mental distress is no weakness.…

Photo by me Auranima (latin glimmer/ghost) ~ my latest #inventaword, for when the sun shines on glossy leaves, wet pebbles or corvid feathers, turning them white. When there are many moments of auranima at one time, say in a forest understorey of holly, or a flock of rooks taking flight, it might seem like the…

  There’s palpable desperation from those good people who know that the badger cull is wrong in every sense. People who want to protect badgers need the best arguments to save them from imminent death. Many campaigners against the cull are claiming to be fully objective in their considerations because they are quoting the science.…

Click the Image for more on Variable Oystercatchers via NZ Birds Online. Today, I write only with a light touch about the sacred. I’m no expert. Neither am I entirely sure of the fullness of its nature. My spiritual sense of self, you could say, is often non-existent. Otherwise, it lays somewhere in a starry…

Photo by me. I retweeted a generic meme on my twitter timeline recently, rare for me, caught before it was lost to the bottomless void beneath my screen… “Measure your life in love” ~ RENT, it said. I had been pondering about how we measure love, rent aside. Can love only be measured by actions?…

  In losing companionate love, it seems the understanding sharpens… (I might add or take away) ~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are no crashing waves, as when one is falling into love. Instead, there are deep oceans trenches of life-love. This is a creative force ~ life enhancing, forged in those salty depths. There is a creativity of…

The following extract is from my article published in Earthlines, Issue 15. July 2016. “The most sinister and compelling evidence to mark the start of the Anthropocene coincides with the commencement of nuclear weapons testing and the detonation of the Trinity atomic device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945. Fallout radionuclides from 1945…

(Grey Squirrel, photo by me) “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realised then and have known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full…

https://twitter.com/ginbat/status/893204574995185667   To feel corsindolorn is a kind of relief. When one carries the burden of understanding just how much Earth-destruction there has been, and is underway, it is momentarily negated by being present in places where life flourishes in abundance.   ~~~~~~~~~~~~

  My word for this midsummer’s day, when our star is strong in the Northern Hemisphere. Sunshine penetrates the deepest hollows in trees, earth, rivers and rockpools. And with the moving shadows of leaves, birds and fish, the light dances like a sacred flame. https://twitter.com/ginbat/status/877461231472435200   This word is my gift to @RobGMacfarlane Thank you…

https://twitter.com/ginbat/status/876404185562001408 ~~~~~~~~~~  

Ginny Battson © 2012 Seeing nature as community, affecting the viscera: sanguimund (blood/Earth ~ latin). Adjective. My #inventaword for today. — Ginny (@ginbat) June 11, 2017 (adjective) Examples ~ As I walk through the sanguimund woodland… I am open to the sanguimund as I gaze along the coastal margins. The sanguimund of this city is…

Ginny Battson  2017 Today, I observed the most intimate union between flower and fly, what we might call the process of cross-pollination, though the words ‘process’ and ‘pollination’ are remarkably poor in communicating the magnificence of what I saw. Here am I, a giant voyeur, standing in a rhos meadow bristling with life, overwhelmed by…

Language is power. Observe meanings and misrepresentations. Please feel free to contribute. via @FindNatureNow “There’s a deceptive style of ‘code talk’ that’s become pervasive in US government re: treatment of wildlife. It’s the psychology of attempting to increase a false ‘public acceptance’ of the blatant mistreatment and abuse of wildlife. Important topic!” https://twitter.com/MrAndrew/status/855692420712976385 https://twitter.com/FindNatureNow/status/855532975651467265 https://twitter.com/MrsEmma/status/855468221692092417…

Paintings of wild animals and hand markings left by adults and children on Sulawesi cave walls, Indonesia, at least 35,000 years old, some of the oldest artworks known. Photo: Maxime Aubert, Griffith University 2014 – do click on the image for more information.   For a while, I think of Earth not as mother but as…

Sound of the Whip-Poor-Will via The Macaulay Library My baby lay on a rainbow rug on a granite summit, the cells of her new born skin shimmering in the Maine sun. Big Fall skies stretched bands of cloud to streamers, whilst hundreds of acres of clear-fell and regenerating forest rolled atop the undulations below us. A…

My whole body shook, I had no control over the waves of anxiety. By now, I could barely speak. Three months since finding my mother, I’d experienced little sleep. I’d experienced a few scorching, electrified dreams, and a torrent of subconscious triggers. My world had warped out of shape. As a mother, I felt I…

Oh, the vicissitude of this day as a celebration of love! From its early roots in paganistic fertility, to the pious diktats of the early Roman Catholic Church and, now, the tacky displays of chocolates and roses in every supermarket, why should we celebrate Valentines at all on 14th February? I adore chocolate (the darker…

  In Australia, a heat tsunami is breaking every record in the book, killing human and non-human life, crippling farmland, livestock and produce, whilst threatening more in the form of unstoppable, slaughterous wild fires. Meanwhile, in an air conditioned building on Capital Hill, Canberra, a public servant, whilst purporting to act in the people’s best…

https://twitter.com/ginbat/status/825417282071429120

I recently presented Fluminism as understanding of the interconnected universal narrative ~ there is flow to and from all dimensions, including ones we are yet to understand. The complexity is endless, the minutiae beautiful. To be a Fluminist involves not only understanding and acceptance, but the promotion of it as a consequentialist and environmental ethic…

Ginny Battson © 2017 I recently presented Fluminism as understanding of the interconnected universal narrative ~ there is flow to and from all dimensions, including ones we are yet to understand. The complexity is endless, the minutiae beautiful. To be a Fluminist involves not only understanding and acceptance, but promotion of it as a combined consequentialist…

Ginny Battson © 2017 Like Heraclitus, I learn from rivers. In all things, I perceive flow. I am not writing of Eastern notions of being present in the zone. Instead, I write of the interconnectedness of all, in the flows of the elements, of water, geology, relationships, true love, time, tides, place, trophic cascades, air,…

Buteo buteo, the Eurasian Buzzard, is a bird of the edge lands, of magic. She launches from her thick twig-nest in high, forked branches to glide on a trajectory to rabbit-grazed meadow. She is a perfect shadow in the wood, yet casts her own deep shadow on grass. Beware the unwary. On sunny days, I…

Ros is a horse and wildlife artist, and also my older sister. She spoke to me recently of her first and only experience of attending The Hunt as a young girl, and I asked her to write the story down. She kindly obliged.   I must have been eight or nine years old when my…

  Bruno Walpoth (click photo for website) After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A…

I shared an article via social media recently, one of many I read on the tangible impacts of climate change borne witness by earth scientists. In a sense, it does not matter which article, but here it is, for those interested. It isn’t good news… brutal, in fact. So I felt the necessity to counter…

GINNY BATTSON·MONDAY, 16 MAY 2016 ~ Note for Friends on FB. I thought I’d now share to the blog…   Emotional pain. It can be so searingly deep, real, visceral. I sometimes feel as if I have no skin whatsoever, it’s that raw. I have friends going through some really difficult times right now and…

  Much is written about love and the needlessness of need ~ Osho says if one loves another, then the state of love itself should suffice, as if anything more will never fulfil that need. To be content as self will breath air into the contentment of us. Two are one, even though we may…

How do you explain to a young, vivacious teenager, a bright child with her whole life ahead of her, that the American political system, revered and celebrated as the epitome of progressive modern Western culture, has just conjured a liar, a sexist, racist, impetuous, gluttonous, climate-change and nature-loss denying Narcissus as a President-Elect? And more,…

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words,” said William H. Gass in A Temple of Texts. I think it is good to summarise into words the discoveries of the cosmos in order for us to reassess our own place within universal reality ~ so far as we…

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words,” said William H. Gass in A Temple of Texts. I think it is good to summarise into words the discoveries of the cosmos in order for us to reassess our own place within universal reality ~ so far as we…

(Photo: ESA/Hubble and NASA) What do cosmologists dream about? The study of particle physics seems light years away from me here at my writing desk, Autumnal sunshine streaming through the window. Yet the discipline examines both what surrounds me and what is within. I can’t see it, but it is all here. I am made…

(Photo: ESA/Hubble and NASA) What do cosmologists dream about? The study of particle physics seems light years away from me here at my writing desk, Autumnal sunshine streaming through the window. Yet the discipline examines both what surrounds me and what is within. I can’t see it, but it is all here. I am made…

The River Wye, towards the Black Mountains. Ginny Battson © 2014   https://twitter.com/ginbat/status/794938933029306371

“DAPL is now flooding the camp with huge lights and flying drones, helicopters, planes, and even fighter jets over us.” Olowaan Plain 2016, Standing Rock Protests (+ credit photo) “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . .…

  Imponderable numbers of interconnections exist between all matter and lifeforms. Like a child, I try to visualise them. I imagine a kind of three dimensional fabric made from glowing yarns, bristling through all, across space and time. The light dims a little when small threads break between phenomena, fading entirely if there are deeper…

  Imponderable numbers of interconnections exist between all matter and lifeforms. Like a child, I try to visualise them. I imagine a kind of three dimensional fabric made from glowing yarns, bristling through all, across space and time. The light dims a little when small threads break between phenomena, fading entirely if there are deeper…

‘Speciesism is morally wrong in the same way that racism and sexism is morally wrong.’ Do you agree with this claim? Introduction In answering the question, I will define the origins of racism, sexism and then speciesism, and then discuss the key difference of speciesism as I perceive it. It is vital that the reader…

‘Medusa.’ What image comes to mind at the mention of her name? I doubt very much if it is one of renewal and wisdom. The Hellenic myth of Medusa remains as metaphor for all that … Source: Snake Goddess, a modern emblem?

Indigenous. The word is powerful, there is no doubt ~ a descriptive adjective that evokes strong concepts of ancestral roots, cultural and historic sensitivities as well as endemic ties to place, species and habitats. It represents ancient tribal peoples who, more often than not, have been usurped in the image of a European trail wagon,…

  It was a blessing to walk with Ben Dog under gently bronzing beech trees. I nearly lost him last month, so our time together today was as golden as the sunlight falling across my desk just now. With my resilient little steed bumbling along the woodland path by my side, I caught my first…

  Openness. By sharing stories, we can learn from one another. Not least, being honest about our feelings, no matter how bleak. No-one should have to deal with emotional turbulence on their own. Life is not all about being happy. But sometimes, unhappy is the bottom of a deep, dark well. After many years, I’ve…

  My mother loved the sparrows in the ivy. They were all over the windows that Summer’s dawn. I was the one who found her. This was written in Creative Writing Class during my inpatient treatment for acute PTSD after her suicide. Word for word… ~~~~~ I pushed my fingers against the brass plate. The…

My double helix, a sugar-phosphate backbone runs the course of a few special rivers. My Walian DNA is a lotic flow winding South towards the sun and into the Severn Sea. Prokaryote, eukaryote. We are one and the same, and yet different. We survive in all things. All things are connected. ~~~ Mother River My…

Emerald Damselfly by me 2015 Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also, Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with…

Crinoid fossil in the rock, St Donats. Photo by me, 2016 ~~~ Having relied so much on wifi to express my love for family and friends recently, I have been considering the comparative values of the internet. By extension, I have realised I am considering the worth of the inanimate; the cables, the silicon chips,…

A dipper, Cinclus cinclus, flies to her nest site above a weir on the River Ely.  Photo by me, 2016. A short post today, but for me none-less vital. By typing, I find clarification. These words were said by the wonderful Maya Angelou: “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one…

A dipper, Cinclus cinclus, flies to her nest site above a weir on the River Ely.  Photo by me, 2016.   A short post today, but for me none-less vital. By typing, I find clarification. I discovered these words recently, written by the wonderful Maya Angelou: “Have enough courage to trust love one more time…

Nant-y-glo Ironworks (Artist unknown) c.1830 “I thought of my river, the Afon-Lwydd, that my father had fished in youth, with rod and line for the leaping salmon under the drooping alders. The alders, he said, that fringed the banks ten deep, planted by the wind of the mountains. But no salmon leap in the river…

Nant-y-glo Ironworks (Artist unknown) c.1830 “I thought of my river, the Afon-Lwydd, that my father had fished in youth, with rod and line for the leaping salmon under the drooping alders. The alders, he said, that fringed the banks ten deep, planted by the wind of the mountains. But no salmon leap in the river…

To Theresa Mary May, PM UK. ~~~~ @ginbat @Number10gov you’ve made serious & grave errors on Environment in your 1st week in office. Let it not get any worse. #climate #biodiversity @ginbat @Number10gov As Prime Minister, you have ultimate responsibility for more than the people of Britain. It extends to all life. One biosphere. @ginbat…

  Introduction This essay is an exploration of the idea of worth and value, referring to ‘species,’ as it has been asked. I will compare ideas across a spectrum of ethical approaches, as the question comes to the heart of environmental ethics. I will begin with some definitions, inferences of key elements, not least what…

I own a well thumbed Special Commemorative edition of A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold. It was published in 1989, one hundred years after his birth and hosts a faithful introduction by Robert Finch. It’s an assembly of pieces originally intended by the author to be called, “Great Possessions.”…

  My room and this distance, awake upon the darkening land, are one. I am a string stretched across deep surging resonance. Things are violin bodies full of murmuring darkness, where women’s weeping dreams, where the rancor of whole generations stirs in its sleep . . . I should release my silver vibrations: then everything…

Sunlight spins a web on broader shoulders of velvet age and greening consciousness. We are where flocks drift as light snow eddies in uneasy breath; climb a leeward beat, where pitted turf and splits of youngish river twist and rip the ankle; hear the clear spring and a forceful breeze through scentless heather. These dry…

I extended an invitation to Twitter for tweet-size memories of personal encounters with FOX. I have collated them all, so far, into this blog and will publish more as I receive them. Thank you to all those who have contributed words and images. Enjoy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One of the wild foxes here in the very rural hills…

  Staring through the window at the patterns of the branches in the trees across the road. I see an Egyptian king’s head and an auroch stood just behind him. When the wind blows, the auroch’s nose nuzzles the king’s neck. And this I watch hour upon hour, with an unrelenting tightness in my solar…

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live…

At its finest moments climbing allows me to step out of ordinary existence into something extraordinary, stripping me of my sense of self-importance. Doug Scott, climber. I used to climb often when younger, and paraglided too (was even a junior instructor.) I loved the mountains. Still do, but in a slightly different kind of way.…

I’ve recognised a small sanctuary nearby, after several months of living in a semi-urban area. Thank goodness and I feel relieved. I’ve just returned from this place, and feel rested. It’s not a place that takes my breath away. It’s without big vistas and the dynamics of clouds and rivers. Neither is it as vital…

Ginny Battson © 2013   Love is free, though may cost dearly. Love is a plethora of acts, embodied in doing. Love is not a statute in law. Love is a contract to grieve. Love reaches way beyond death. Love is not always beatitude. Love cannot be bought, sold, traded. Love is paradoxical; unbidden turmoil and planned…

Ginny Battson © 2011 Last weekend’s announcement that 23 new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ) are to be established around UK seas is a small step towards the full protections we ought to be affording our living oceans and coastal habitats. The sum total of 50 zones now currently designated, however, are still minimal compared to…

Please find my latest blog as guest writer for key nature website Nearby Wild, an initiative dedicated to celebrating and enhancing local wildlife near to where we live. On my own early nature connection and the significance of Mentors

Here’s the latest briefing from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, Houses of Parliament “Trends in Environment” If you care about nature, do read it. As per usual, the UK science community advising here FAIL to raise the importance of egalitarian environmental education. Nor do they seriously question growth economics supported by the Natural…

Cliffs at Nash Point ~ Ginny Battson © 2015 “If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths…

I can’t even begin to comprehend the collective grief, shock and injury in Paris right now. Pain and suffering are the cups that spilleth over. Refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or freezing in the fields across the Balkans, flood victims suffer in Yemen, and those everywhere around the world subjected to extreme poverty, brutality…

Please find my latest blog, Ecoliteracy for All, at Wildlife Trusts campaign site “Every Child Wild” Thank you.

Robin Through Glass by  Ginny Battson I’m not sure many people consider the question of equity in human society in relation to how it impacts non-human lives in their complex interconnections. Equity, meaning justice and fairness for all with regard to equal rights to satisfy needs. This could be quite a monotone subject and, I’ll…

It’s Autumn, and the fungal fruits of the woodland floor appear to resonate more than at any other time of year. To begin to understand fungal bodies and their place within ecosystems, one needs to imagine part of the world beneath the humus and deadwood, where the ‘hyphae’ grow. These are the living thread-like filaments…

Travel this ancient path beneath lichen. Worn rock and turf tell of this bow above where a boy once swung in sun and smiles. Further on, in a clearing above a gorge, reticent walls of hand hewn stone draw around a keen sycamore. We meet at this hearth, exposed by daylight where fire once warmed…

“it seems the actual direction of winding is determined by the plant’s genes and gravity. Japanese researchers (Hashimoto) found that a slight difference in the structure of tubulin, a microtubule protein in cells, determines the winding direction. They chemically mutated a straight growing vine until some wound left (CCW), then looked at the molecular structure…

Let me get this straight from the outset, I am not writing about sexual desire in relation to Jeremy Corbyn. Freudians may think sex and power are inextricable but it’s really beyond my remit, I know my limits. Instead, I’m thinking in terms of the want of political power. Corbyn’s inaugural speech as Labour Party…

Dywedwch wrthyf . Sut y gall y curiad ei hadain yn cael eu cario yn fy mhoced i mi glywed yn ewyllys , y sibrwd lisped o sensu , a gynhaliwyd yn fy mhoced , preimio ar gyfer hedfan dros famwlad , fel pan fydd y porthor cyfoedion trwy plât gwydr , jet adlewyrchu yn…

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.…