LEAVES FROM A NATURE NOTEBOOK: AFTER DARK

My writings on nightwalking will be compiled into a single volume on October entitled ‘After Dark’, and published in paperback by Doubleday. Here is the introduction:

I began nightwalking out of necessity. The congenial village pub that served Wadsworth’s 6X to the underage was not, alas, situated in my village, so required a three-mile perambulation home at closing time. The path to my earth was along the downstream bank of the River Wye. One midnight, I witnessed barn owls, ghostly raptorial spheres, hunting over the December-frosted water meadow. In the heat of a summer night, one aroused with the aroma of refulgent elderflowers, Daubenton’s bats vortexed around my head so closely that I knew the cooling breath of their leather wings on my face. Often there was the sheer romance of moonlight on water. And thus a teenage prerequisite became a lifetime pleasure. To walk the British countryside at night is to enter a dark, adventurous continent, from which one returns with an explorer’s tales of wonders.