Playing with marbles – the inversion of nature

Playing with marbles – the inversion of nature

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It is a mild spring day in England, and I am on a passenger train headed for central London. I have a couple of unremarkable errands to run, and I am in no great hurry. In my carriage, I overhear a young child ask a grown-up one of those deceptively challenging...
Little by little: Rewilding the microcosmos

Little by little: Rewilding the microcosmos

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When we think of rewilding, it is natural for our mind’s eye to open onto a wide vista, be it a swathe of forest untamed by wolves, a tract of grassland where large grazers have been renewed, or an expanse of ocean in which marine mammals, despite centuries of...
Stoking nature’s fire (and the flames within)

Stoking nature’s fire (and the flames within)

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It is Midsummer’s Eve, and as the sun slides towards the tree-obscured horizon behind me, I sit facing south, looking for ripples. My seat is a log by the edge of a large pond, in a place whose name is not important here. Beyond the water stand birches and pines, and...