Couverture de Isère, France. May, 2021.

Isère, France. May, 2021.

Isère, France. May, 2021.

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 (After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Isère, France. May, 2021.Of all the magics I have witnessed, the time of the mountain greening is perhaps that which quickens my heart the most.The bursting of spring is deliciously fresh, the bee drone of the long hot summer days sensuality itself, the roaring of the stags as the woodlands turn red and gold and yellow and russet thrills without exception, and the deep quiet of the snow-thick winter places the perfect hideaway for serious meditation.Yet, for each of the four readily-acknowledged seasons, there are many others shoehorned within their boundaries—and, increasingly, those boundaries and dates are themselves stretched and altered.Winter is not just deep winter, it is first-frost and first-snow, it is the shortest day, and the coldest time, it is when the wolves howl and the skies dance with the magic of the aurora, the sparkle of the stars and galaxies stretching out and out and out, far beyond our time and space. It is full of many things, each a season unto itself, each a moment which is reached, a step on a path winding through our lives.The mountain greening is a small portion of spring. I have been fortunate to be near mountains in spring on several occasions. Perhaps not as much as I would like, but there are other springs in other places, and I do not have that many years to experience every shift of the earth. Other springs, whether by the coast of Scotland and the changing of the birds and budding of the clifftop and dune flowers, or whether the end of the dry season and the coming of the rains in the tropics, the relief of clear air palpable—they are all wonders of their own.Watching that creeping line of fresh, bright green moving up a wooded mountainside, however, is something ancient, something primeval—buried within me so very deeply I cannot help but pause and stare, no matter how many times I look. There are days where the sun coaxes the trees to leaf almost before my eyes, another strata unfurling, pushing higher and higher, only to pause with the night, or a colder or overcast day, resting on this plateau, catching a breath in that corrie or below that ridge, before pushing over and beyond and ever up.Here, in Isère, the mountain greening is well underway, but not yet over. Every morning, as I look out the window at the view of the Vercors Massif to the west, I try and gauge whether the line of trees in leaf is higher than yesterday, whether the yellow tree flowers and catkins on the lower slopes have conquered another ...
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