Pay attention to what is here, because nothing remains exactly as we find it. Love it while it is living beside you, and when it changes or disappears, let your remembering become another way of holding it. — Jane Maye, Nature Speaks

I have always preferred writing longhand, but especially outdoors. Indoors it's easy to believe writing comes purely from the mind. Outside, a leaf turns, a bird calls, the wind lifts the page… New piece on longhand writing and Abyssus nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/08/05/w...

Writing Outdoors - Nature Speaks

I have always preferred writing longhand, but especially outdoors. There is something about taking a notebook outside that changes the nature of the work. Indoors, it is easy to believe that writing c...

nature-speaks.co.uk

I cut the rose to draw it. Only later did I notice the web threaded through one hollow petal — the spider long gone. A home I hadn't known was a home, taken without asking. Attentive wondering didn't stop me causing harm. New post: nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/08/03/before-i-could-read-it/

When does a flower stop being beautiful? This fading rose made me realise that perhaps flowers do not lose their beauty. They simply become quieter, asking a little more patience from the person willing to stop and look. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/08/02/w...

These hydrangeas looked beyond saving after weeks of drought, but two weeks later tiny green shoots began to appear. It reminded me that we usually look for nature at its most beautiful, yet some of its deepest stories begin when we think the beauty has gone. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/30/e...

I used to think creativity began with making. Now I think it begins with paying attention. The drawing, print or essay is often just the visible trace of a much quieter process: noticing. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/29/w... #NatureWriting #Creativity #Attention #Nature

I thought I was looking at destruction. I realised I was watching transformation. The leaves were becoming part of another life, while their hidden architecture emerged in beauty. Sometimes nature changes the story by asking us to stay a little longer. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/26/w...

The trees look early-autumn. It's really a summer that asked too much, not a season changing. We do this too — mistake stress for a change of character. Better question: not what season is this, but what it's responding to. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/21/i...

Some landscapes ask us to look further. Woodland asks us to look deeper. Perhaps the richest way through life isn’t to see further than everyone else, but simply to notice more deeply where we already stand. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/20/t... #NatureSpeaks #AttentiveWondering

Hidden beneath the trees at Pandy are the remains of the old rock works, where stone was once blasted with gunpowder before travelling by tramway through the valley. The woodland hasn’t erased that history. It has become part of it. New Nature Speaks essay: nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/18/w...

What the Woodland Chose to Keep - Nature Speaks

Hidden among the trees at Pandy, the remains of the old rock works reveal a deeper story about industry, memory and the enduring relationship between people and the living landscape.

nature-speaks.co.uk

Perhaps attentive wondering isn’t choosing between myth and knowledge, but allowing both to deepen our relationship with the natural world. Sometimes we find only the empty cradle and are left to imagine the life that swam away. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/17/a... #NatureSpeaks #AttentiveWondering

I thought it was a dead leaf. Then it breathed. A Large Yellow Underwing, wings folded over flashes of gold, hidden until it moved. We carry our brightest colours the same way — quietly, folded away, shown only to those who stay long enough to look twice. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/15/t...

I spent this afternoon chasing a tiny drifting seed down the road. As a child I called these little parachutists fairies and believed that catching one meant good luck. Perhaps the world is still enchanted if we pay enough attention. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/14/c...

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.” — William Blake The difference is not in the tree. It is in the quality of our attention. Attentive Wondering is an invitation to pause long enough for the world to become alive again.

A feather in the leaf litter — pale, small, easy to miss. Trees let go of leaves. Flowers let go of petals. Birds shed feathers they no longer need. Nothing in nature clings to what has already done its work. New on Nature Speaks nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/13/a...

At Brantwood, Ruskin's desk still holds his stones and shells. He wrote: the greatest thing a soul does is to see, and tell what it saw plainly. His drawing master Harding taught the same lesson with a pencil. Look first. The rest follows. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/11/a... #AttentiveWondering

Delicate mushroom in moss on the forest floor #MushroomMonday #FungiFriends #mycology #PNW #nature #photography

Mistook a sheep for a rock this morning - until it lifted its head. A small reminder that seeing isn't the same as looking. The world gets richer the longer we stay with it. #AttentiveWondering #SlowLooking

Small, perfect circles in a leaf. I let the not-knowing sit a while before reaching for a name. Turns out it's shot-hole disease - the leaf quietly sealing off and releasing what it can no longer hold. The wild remembers. So do you. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/07/s... #NatureWriting

A fallen damson, marked by small teeth. I did not see who came. I let the not-knowing stay a little longer, gently, before reaching for a name. The wild remembers. So do you. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/06/t...

You have to keep an eye on those cheeky cubs 🦡💚 📷 @lewisnewgram

Each morning, a pair of ravens arrives on the fence. This summer, their young too. New Attentive Wondering piece, on ravens and a way of seeing we may have forgotten nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/05/r... The wild remembers. So do you.

A beetle on a fallen tree, red as a cardinal's robe, antennae reaching forward as if tasting the air - the brief visible end of years spent hidden under bark. Painted it after, in ink, on an old page of sheet music. The earth has music for those who listen.

Mary Oliver made room for readers who thought poetry wasn't for them. That's the work, isn't it - making the door wider, not the room smaller.

Kamuka@kamuka.bsky.social · last mo.

A Poet for Everyone, Even Those Who Don’t Read Poetry www.nytimes.com/2026/07/03/m...

Dappled light, low water, stones. Digby watching the river do nothing in particular - which is to say, everything it always does. Some mornings the practice is just this: stopping. The wild remembers. So do you.

You bend to reach it - low branches, five steps down, a bench above the river. Look up and you're always seeing the underside of the leaves. Then the breeze brings it closer, and you notice: not empty. Small dark bodies, there every year, whether you look or not nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/03/w...

Petals gone. Stamens curling brown. Green beads pushing through beneath - same stem, same moment. Decay isn't beside growth here. It's making it. The wild remembers. So do you. #NatureWriting #AttentiveWondering nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/07/02/w...

What the Petals Leave Behind - Nature Speaks

A blackberry flower is not one flower, not really, not if you look as closely as the small creatures already living inside its cluster are looking. The white petals are already gone from this one, dro...

nature-speaks.co.uk

Photographed a snail this morning - shell like weathered wood, unhurried, certain. Only later, looking back, did I see the tiny spider riding its shell. Had been there the whole time. The world often waits for a second look. The wild remembers. So do you. #NatureSpeaks #AttentiveWondering

Magpie Moth on my window frame tonight. Black and cream and ochre, bold enough to look hand-painted - caterpillars raised on currant and gooseberry leaves, hence the old name "currant moth."

I only noticed it because I was looking. Two birch leaves, fallen together on the path. Up close: fine serrated edges, veins branching like rivers, a glossy face and a soft one - as if each leaf were two leaves at once. A leaf is never simply a leaf. nature-speaks.co.uk/2026/06/30/t...