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Late in January 2020, out for a walk through the fields near to home, I noticed an extraordinary ancient Ash tree in the hedgerow. Fallen, probably during a storm many years ago, maybe eighteen feet long, the huge trunk now grows laterally with the roots at one end and all the branches growing up vertically as it goes along. It has been incorporated into the field boundary hedge. I decided to call it ‘tree hedge,’ and it might be the subject of a few drawings.

A few weeks later, we were all supposed to stay at home and only go out for ‘permitted exercise’ an hour a day. I began doing this same walk every day, listening to the birds, making notes and taking photographs on my phone, and then spent most of the rest of each day drawing and painting – never imagining that the daily walk would turn into such an enjoyable and consuming marathon.

In the early morning light, walking in the footsteps of all those who had followed the same path for generations before, time and space seemed to move in odd ways. One morning the far hills appeared a very long way off and the next morning the low cloud compressed the landscape. Occasionally, the kestrel hovering overhead seemed as close as the young mole crawling through the grass verge.

Once a week, on a Monday, I gathered all of the things I’d seen together into a little email and attached that week’s drawing, sending it to fellow bird lovers and friends who might be interested in the natural world. A strange, accidental, kind of nature diary. I sent it to about fifty people. Some forwarded it on to their friends, others sent it on to parents, in their nineties, who hadn’t been able to leave the house for months. From around the world came these extraordinary responses – photographs of the Cherry Blossom in Osaka, someone else spoke about the street demonstrations outside the Capitol building in Portland, reports of bird sightings in Texas gardens or Tuscan hills. One drawing was turned into a cross-stitch embroidery. Another week the words came back woven into a song!

I made up the name ‘Walking on Skylark Ridge’ because for the first 125 days there were invariably skylarks singing whenever I went out walking. Part nature diary, part autobiography of sorts… one year of taking the same daily walk and one year of experimenting with a variety of pencils pens and papers…

Copies may be ordered here: SHOP

Copies may be ordered here: SHOP