David Selby’s new book, Down the Combe and Into the Meadow: Reflections on Nature and Learning, will be available from April 2024 in hardback and paperback versions.
Using a diary format David explores the natural h
istory of a secluded coastal valley, Weston Combe, over twelve chapters, one for each month of the year. The writing is richly descriptive of the natural world and further enhanced by some 138 stunningly beautiful photographs, including 51 images by award winning nature photographer David White.
Thus far, the reader may be forgiven for thinking that the book is simply a paean to a beautiful valley situated on the Jurassic Coast of East Devon. But in each chapter David broadens the local nature description so that emerging from it are in-depth, eye-opening reflections on a nature-related issues of global significance allied with reflections on implications for our living and learning. As such, the book makes a powerfully significant contribution to the case for the conservation and restoration of the natural world.
The chapter titles are as follows:
- Chapter 1: January – Hibernal Musings on Place, Self and Nature
- Chapter 2: February – Knowing Nature: A Tale of Candlemas Bells, Elf Caps, Dog’s Mercury and a Moonlit Night
- Chapter 3: March – Where Stands the Lenten Lily? Sustainability and the Denaturing of Nature
- Chapter 4: April – On the Earliness of Spring: Local Nature Learning in a Time of Climate Breakdown
- Chapter 5: May – Beaver on the Otter: Rewilding Nature, Rewilding Ourselves
- Chapter 6: June – The Profusion of Summer Meadows: Immersive Encounters with Biodiversity
- Chapter 7: July – What Butterflies Can Tell Us: Towards Metamorphic Nature Learning
- Chapter 8: August – Where Land Meets Sea: Coast as Theatre for Nature Learning
- Chapter 9: September – Towards a Kinship of the Fields: Returning Nature to the Heart of Farming
- Chapter 10: October – Nature on the Move: Epic Journeys, Dispersals and Neo-natives
- Chapter 11: November – The Inclined Plane: Facing Loss and Finding Hope in a Time of Falling Away
- Chapter 12: December – Rite Thinking: Ritual and Celebration as Nature Learning
In writing this book David has drawn on a lifelong love affair with nature, a wide and deep knowledge of environmental issues as well as an astonishing breadth of source material, the latter offered to the reader through copious, enlightening endnotes and digestion for further reading. This beautiful book, enhanced by folded artist drawn maps, is a treasure trove for nature lovers as well as essential reading for teachers and students of environmental topics.
Book details; ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-83778-020-4. Paperback 978-1-83778-026-6
Available from Blue Poppy Publishing: http://www.bluepoppypublishing.co.uk or direct from Sustainability Frontiers