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Real people share real stories of their connection with Nature. Hear how it feels to talk with animals, birds and landscape. Share the magic of cross species communication.
Created by award winning Nature writer and poet Estelle Phillips.
Instagram @estelle_writer44
TikTok @EstellePhillips
I had the wonderful privilege of speaking with author and publisher, John Woolcott, about his connection with nature. His most recent book, The Tattooed Hills, has won deserved praise in all quarters. John's relationship with landscape is profound and fascinating in equal measure. He loves chalk downs, and I was amazed by what he said about Groverley Wood. You're gonna love this podcast.
Jon Woolcott:I'm a writer, and I write mostly travel writing. It's always about Britain and specifically England. And then alongside that, and not so much the focus of today, I'm also a publisher. I work for the independent publisher Little Toller Books. So yeah, that's me.
Estelle Phillips:You write a lot about landscape and nature. And what I'm curious to know is, in your entire life, what has been the most emotional and profound connection that you have had with anything in the natural world?
Jon Woolcott:Good and big question, isn't it? I think probably you're right to talk about landscape. I think for me it is a connection to a specific sort of landscape and it's always been with me and I wouldn't be able to say the moment which I first identified it. But it's to do with the Chalklands, I think. The Chalklands which are southern English And that's where I grew up.
Jon Woolcott:I suppose it's where I come from. And maybe inevitably then I feel a kind of connection to that sort of topography. The only thing I can think about is that I can remember when I was at primary school in like an art class or something, and you'd be given like a sheet of wallpaper to to paint on. And I'm a terrible, I can't draw. But we were asked to draw maybe the countryside or something, I can't remember.
Jon Woolcott:But what I do remember drawing is something was very chalklandish. So rolling hills, very few trees, barley, that kind of thing. So in a way that's not so much connection to nature or the natural world because I've always feel like the southern English landscapes, because they've been populated for so many millennia, aren't particularly natural wild state. They're a farmed managed human landscape. But it's still the kind of place that I probably feel most at home with and to.
Jon Woolcott:And there's something for me about beech trees and beech woods and the high thin chalky soil. Very different where I live. I live in the Blackwall Vale, which is on the clay, and that's low and flat, and the soil is hard to dig, and all those things. But I suppose I'm emotionally drawn to the slight higher places. Not to mountains, not to the wild places, not to the north.
Jon Woolcott:You know that Robin McFarlane has described himself as north minded. Yeah. Because he always loves going to the mountains, getting up mountains, That's that kind of not me. I'm much more interested in something that feels a bit more human maybe, little bit more muddled and messy and busy. And I'm interested in the combination and the contradiction sometimes between the human world and the natural world and the collision between those two.
Estelle Phillips:How do you see that collision?
Jon Woolcott:I think you see it everywhere really. If you, for instance, go to one of the things I've written about in my most recent book, The Tattooed Hills, are the the military badgers at Fofant, is about a chapter there. And obviously you've got that great wall of green of the Crabbourne Chase as it, you know, is kind of the result of glaciation. And it's very dramatic actually for Southern England if you were to drive along the A30, as I know you must, but from Safran Shaftesbury to Salisbury, and there's this great green wall with these regimental badges carved into them. And aside from the badges, if you were to climb the hill, you'll come to a hill fort, an Iron Age hill fort I think it is, and also a drove road.
Jon Woolcott:And those are all things to do with the human existence, superimposed obviously upon a natural landscape. And so that's how I see that really. Maybe it's not so much of a collision as a kind of muddled up and a kind of combination of the human and the natural, which always to me feels completely right. I don't think we are not separate from nature, we're part of it, and we have our impact on it, whether that's good or bad. And so, I see that all the time, I guess, at least in the places that I like to write about.
Estelle Phillips:I find that for one of the thin places.
Jon Woolcott:That's really interesting, do you?
Estelle Phillips:Yeah, do you? Last time I
Jon Woolcott:was there was when I was writing the book, And so I suppose that was maybe eighteen months ago, maybe a bit less. And it was a very inhospitable day. I've actually volunteered to help with the scouring and cleaning of one of the badges that day, but they called it off because the rain was so bad. It's very steep. So therefore, I decided to go anyway and have a look around, and I wanted to walk along the Drove Road and try and think a little bit about that.
Jon Woolcott:So I kind of slightly stumbled across the hill fort, which was full of sheep, Yeah. Which was very interesting because obviously those forts are not always built offensively. The word hill fort is a relatively recent coinage. Therefore, sorts of things. Animal pens, you know, places for feasting, meeting, trading, whatever.
Jon Woolcott:And so the factory was full of sheep seemed totally appropriate to I think because there's something well, was very isolated. I didn't see anyone for ages. And I could see the rain sort of steaming in overhead. So therefore inevitably I felt I was quite exposed. And actually I did start thinking about the nature of time while I was there.
Jon Woolcott:Yeah. And I write about that in the book a little bit, about the difference between people constantly talk about landscapes as timeless. And I kept thinking this isn't timeless at all. It's full of time. It's time laden.
Jon Woolcott:So I'm not sure if I got the idea of it being a thin place as in a kind of a place between two worlds. But I definitely feel felt very much like all time had collided at one point. Yeah. And I feel that all the time. And I got that sensation very powerfully when I was in the Chilterns and thinking about the human landscapes there when I was researching another part of the book.
Jon Woolcott:And I've often felt like there's actually no such thing as time in a way. Are all existing at all points in all time, all together. And you just have to look past those things. Now that sounds really mystical and woo woo, and I know it does. But what I mean by that, I suppose, is that the past is always present in the landscape.
Estelle Phillips:There is also this thing, isn't there, that time is kind of like slightly a human construct.
Jon Woolcott:It is time space is. Completely a human construct. And you see that, you can see that actually in physics. That if you think about things like some of Einstein's theories about the fact that, you know, time can potentially move backwards as well as forwards. Now, we have to see it like that way to make sense of our lives for it to move on for it to be for me to know that I'm here sitting with you now, but it but in a couple of hours, I'll need to be cooking dinner.
Jon Woolcott:So we need time. But at the same time some time. It also feels like it's not always real.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. I I really agree with you. Yeah. And also, I see it as time as being in that context very much a subjective thing. So I personally have a bit of a question mark over it within the context of nature.
Estelle Phillips:So Yeah. Because it's it's so much human. I remember once you and I were having a conversation, and the Valley Of Stones came up.
Jon Woolcott:Oh, yes.
Estelle Phillips:That was your response at the time. Yeah? And I wanted to ask you about that.
Jon Woolcott:I well, I love the Valley Of The Stones and that was so that I mean, for people who don't know, that's in South Dorset. We don't have very many stone circles in Dorset. And that's because there isn't very much in the way of stone. But there are a group which are gathered together in the land just above Cheshire Beach, which is in the way kind of the start of the Chalklands. And they're quite modest stone circles in the area, but they're very well worth visiting.
Jon Woolcott:Maybe partly because they're so modest and they're not visited very much, maybe except for the saltcestors. And they they surround the Valley Of Stones, this ancient quarry. So it's obviously formed by glaciation. I think two ice ages, I think. But from which lots of stones were picked up, carried off, and there's that Polisoara there as well where the tools were sharpened, which was recently discovered, I think.
Jon Woolcott:So that's a very important place in lots of ways I think and I loved visiting it. I've been a few times and it's really extraordinary.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Can you talk a bit John about the extraordinariness of it please?
Jon Woolcott:I think it's to do, partly it's to do with the topography. So it's quite unusual. It's a dry river valley so it's all slopes downwards relatively isolated so it's quite hard to find and it's dotted with these large stones. And so the sense I suppose that people have been there in one way or another for thousands of years making use from that natural resource is extraordinary. I also like the fact that they're kind of scattered quite randomly.
Jon Woolcott:The first time I went was with my friend Martin Waldsley, who's a storyteller, and we went on a walk. I think I was probably doing it to research my book about Dorset.
Estelle Phillips:And
Jon Woolcott:while we were there, he told me that he'd written because he's a storyteller by trade, and he, you know, he takes groups of school kids to the area, he's also a kind of a weaver of worlds and stories. And so he'd made up a story about two giants fighting and hurling stones at one another. And so in a way what he was doing is kind of putting new myths into the landscape, which I really liked. The idea that these stories continually get get told. Yet they're also quite ancient things because the myths of giants fighting are everywhere.
Jon Woolcott:So I think the Valley Of The Stones is a really extraordinary place. And it does have a particular sort of atmosphere. And maybe that's something to do with the fact that it's not hard to access, but not lots of people go there or anything.
Estelle Phillips:I really agree with you about the Valley Of The Saints. Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:It is it is quite something, isn't it? And maybe it's maybe it's the stuff around it as well. Yeah. Obviously, the most obvious monument in the area is is is Hardy's Tower, which is a sort of funny, slightly squat Victorian thing. But there's also all those, the dolmen stuff in the area as well.
Jon Woolcott:And there's a new stone circle really close to there too, which is only a few years old. And Martin was involved in some of that work to put that together. And that does have that moment where I think it's the mid the mid summer solstice lights it. Lights the stone in the middle, and that's that's really great.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Is really great.
Jon Woolcott:Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:I I the first time I went into the Valley Of The Stones, I could definitely feel something. Could you? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And also wasn't expecting to at all.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:Oh, that's that's that's interesting because sometimes
Estelle Phillips:it's I didn't even know it was I didn't know it was like the Valley Of The Stones. Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:It's really interesting that you didn't expect to see it because sometimes I think about I'm I'm my most recent book, I write a bit about the idea of spirit of place and what that means. Yeah. And is it a thing? And I eventually conclude you can't pin it down and you just know it when you feel it. And sometimes that's because of, you know, particular conjunctions of things in the landscape.
Jon Woolcott:I particularly felt it when I was near a white horse at Chirrhill, which is right on a hill fort and right next to a much more recent tower built in the nineteenth century. And so that's quite a strange conjunction of things. And so there is a kind of a spirit of place there, but that's quite a manufactured thing. And I was thinking, well, am I feeling this because I think I'm feeling this or am I feeling this because of something else? And eventually I say, well, I just don't know.
Jon Woolcott:And I have on occasion felt a very strong sense of it. There's do you know Glovely Woods? Which is a beach woods between Salisbury running west, and there's a Roman Road that runs all the way through it, six miles or so. It's the only bits of the Roman Road that's kind of left really, because it's lost under the plough on the side. It's an extraordinary place, I used to live very close to it, and used to go there quite a lot either walking or cycling.
Jon Woolcott:A curiously empty place too in lots of ways. I remember being on a walk there by myself just off the main avenue and getting a sense of what, the poet Sarah Maitland has called forest fear, a kind of real sense of something lurking and I could not say why and I was like, is this just me superimposing an expectation on it or is there something else? But it was a proper real oh I don't think I'm going to walk along this path any further feeling and I had to retreat. I mean the fact that that happened more than twenty years ago, and I can still remember it very clearly, is something, I think.
Estelle Phillips:How did you feel?
Jon Woolcott:Scared. A kind of a total like there was something malevolent.
Estelle Phillips:Interesting.
Jon Woolcott:And I have not felt that, I don't really believe in ghosts. And yet, there was something there that made me retreat. It was perfectly bright, normal, summer's day, maybe woodlands are intrinsically, maybe because of all the folklore associated with them, sort of filled with menace. You know there's always a face looking at you from the woods isn't there, even if it's a deer. Yet, And never before or since have I felt that in that place, in that woodland.
Jon Woolcott:And I love that woodland hugely. I used to visit it all the time. I used to cycle through it maybe once a week. And, yes, never before or since did I feel that particular sense.
Estelle Phillips:Because you're what I would call a sensible person, John. Wouldn't you agree?
Jon Woolcott:It might depend on your definition, but yeah, yeah, let's say I'm sensible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:Yeah. So I think I am. I'm always, I think, trying to tread the line between what I think is a sensible, logical approach. You see that in my writing. Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:But also being drawn to other things. And so I would say I'm not a religious person in a conventional sense. And, you know, I rarely go to church. I am interested in religion, I'm not very interested in God. And I'm also sometimes quite drawn to kind of what you might describe as kind of pagan beliefs, something to do with the rhythm of the earth and its cycles and its rhythms and the seasons and all those things.
Jon Woolcott:So I'm kind of I met some John Train last year when I was going to London, and I had with me Ronald Huffman's book on Pagan Britain, which is really good. It's a very good, big survey, and I was about a third of the way through it. Mhmm. I sort of took it with me. I plonked it down next to myself on the train, and the woman opposite me said, are you a pagan?
Jon Woolcott:I mean, first, she didn't ask me, not hello, but are you a pagan? And so I was a bit taken aback, and I had to formulate my thoughts. And I think I said I was pagan adjacent, because I couldn't quite interested in it, you know, pagan curious, is that a thing? Maybe it is, I don't know. So that's probably as close as I can come to it.
Jon Woolcott:So I suppose I am in tune, I hope, with the kind of the rhythms, the music of the landscape, but also I like to step back from things and say, Yeah, but what am I actually looking at here? And some, I think some readers find that a bit confusing with my writing, because they think, Well, where's he coming from? Is he an out and out, you know, is he a more stunting pagan with flowers in his hair? Or is he this kind of messy, kind of modernist, probably between the two. And I don't think there's anything wrong with not making your mind up, not being sure.
Jon Woolcott:I think it's about nuance.
Estelle Phillips:I don't think it's I don't see it as a choice. I just see it as a kind of like rainbow of responsiveness, really.
Jon Woolcott:Okay. Where would you put yourself on this on the spectrum of sensible to whatever the the opposite of that is?
Estelle Phillips:Well, I'm a very sensible person, but I'm extremely spiritual, and I'm also religious.
Jon Woolcott:Okay.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. So I have strong connection with landscape. Yeah. When we started this podcast, we were talking about painting that you did as a child. Oh, yes.
Estelle Phillips:And what I was interested in knowing was, as a child, what made you do that?
Jon Woolcott:Oh, don't know.
Estelle Phillips:Because that's the thing, isn't it?
Jon Woolcott:It's a really good point. I think that it might have been slightly dependent on what our teacher asked us to draw, of course. But it was probably, you know, just do something. Keep me you know, be quiet for half an hour kids. That sort of thing.
Jon Woolcott:I think it's partly because I grew up in a road, which was the last road in town. And beyond it was the countryside, and the other side was the town. It's not like that anymore actually. There's a there's a housing estate beyond that. I say it was the last road, it wasn't quite because beyond us was a factory.
Jon Woolcott:So the factory and then there was the countryside. And so when I went for walks, were usually with my mother and our dog, we would go into the countryside. My brother, who's a couple of years younger than me, is a more urban person than I am, although he lives in Dorset. And he's an architect, so he builds stuff. He puts stuff up.
Jon Woolcott:And he was always more interested in the kind of built environment, if you see what I mean, that kind of thing. And I was more interested in the countryside. It was an interesting dichotomy being on the last road, and one of us was thinking this way, and one of us was thinking the other way. Actually I went and lived in London for twenty years, so it's not like I, you know, at some points I've been a thoroughly urban person in my life. But I always felt like I wanted to go south and west, And when we moved house a few years later, I was lucky enough to have a bedroom that looked out over towards Cranbourne Chase.
Jon Woolcott:And had very thin curtains at the at the window, so I could always look through them. I always would imagine walking out of the house in that way, walking Southwest. Actually towards where I live now, without knowing any of that. I think I've just always been drawn to that sort of sort of topography. It just made me feel like I was perfectly at home there.
Jon Woolcott:And that's not to say that other people cannot also be perfectly at home in in those landscapes. I don't want to get all blood and soil about it or anything like that. I'm not at all like that. I think the landscape's for everyone and we should all, you know, find the place that speaks to us. Yeah.
Jon Woolcott:But it always has for me. And I think that probably that was what behind was behind that picture, which I I don't have it any longer and no one wants to look at it. But I can I still imagine it? I still know what I did. So I think there was something in me that always connected to that sort of landscape.
Jon Woolcott:And I know lots of people who feel the same way about it as well. Really interestingly, I've been doing lots of talks for my new book. And the book which is ostensibly about Chalk Hill figures actually is something more about, it's kind of investigation into the Chalklands and celebration of them to a certain extent, but it's also about memory, identity, grief, loss, all of those things which somehow seem to be concentrated for me in these places. It's about history and archaeology, but I think it's a lot more than that. So I think as I've thought about it more and more, those very specific southern English landscapes have come to hold a sort of meaning for me, but I do also know speaking to all these people who've been to events, that it has the same impact on them.
Jon Woolcott:They don't have to be in the Chalklands. I did an event at the Foy Literary Festival a couple of months ago in Cornwall. It's quite hard to get further away from The Chalk in England than Cornwall. And I thought, who's going come to this? You know, it's very nice and I want to be in Foy, but really.
Jon Woolcott:And actually, it was full of people and they were all now some of them of course moved around because we're very mobile population. But some people just also felt that there was an identification with that sort of landscape. I think it's something to do with the fact that in the last hundred years or so, Britain's landscapes have been have come to be seen in the southern English sort of way. The thatched cottage, the the parish church, that sort of thing, they become less wild in the imagination. And that's something to do with things like the all the shell posters between the wall, which celebrated motorists going out and exploring exploring the landscapes that you get to basically from London in your new car.
Jon Woolcott:And so somehow our identity as a nation has got really bound up with the Chalklands. And so I wanted to explore some of that and I know that is kind of sometimes a difficult area to explore particularly now. Therefore it felt like it was really important to do so, and to do so from the perspective of somebody who considers himself a progressive and say well it's okay to think about England and Englishness provided you think about it in the right sort of context. It's a very long winded way of coming back to your original thinking about why did I choose that original picture. But I think it's just a kind of a connection to a particular sort of countryside.
Estelle Phillips:Fantastic, John. Thank you so much. Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four, and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.