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"'If you were to watch the disappearance of the snows accelerated into a matter of hours, on a speeded-up film, it would be like seeing lights dimming and going out on a dark night. By midsummer there are probably several hundred pieces of snow left. By late summer only a few are still shining. These are the last snows, the survivors."
Christopher Nicholson's first book of nature writing is a beautiful account of an unusual obsession. In 2016 the author of The Elephant Keeper and Winter spent August searching for the remaining snows of the Scottish Highlands.
His account of his solitary walk is by turns funny, fascinating and inspiring. A meditation on walking, on mountains, on snow and our changing climate, Nicholson also turns his curious eye on nature-lovers themselves. What are we looking for when we walk and what is it we want from nature? What is it we see and what is it we miss? What remains when we are gone and what have we lost from the landscape forever?
A quizzical, ultimately uplifting, journey from a new nature writing voice.
After university Christopher Nicholson worked for a charity encouraging community development. He then became a radio scriptwriter and producer, and made many documentaries and features mainly for the BBC World Service in London. For the past twenty-five years he has lived in the countryside between Wiltshire and Dorset.
"This is the kind of beautiful writing that transcends form – in this case nature writing – to arrive somewhere improbable and compelling."
– Paul Evans, Guardian
"A beautiful book about love and loss, fragility and chance, the wide world and the near worl [...] full of intense light and colour, extraordinary glimpses, moving insights and subtle humour."
– Richard kerridge, author of Cold Blood
"A ravishingly lovely book"
– Keggie Carew, author of Dadland
