Wilding by Isabella Tree was delivered by the postman through car windows as we were on our way to the reservoir for a swim. I read the first few chapters on the beach, as we like to call the grey stony southern rim of Cork's water supply. I'm usually alert to whatever is happening on the land around, which weeds shine through, which have vanished, what machinery is out there and to what effect, as well as local weather and how warm the water has become.
Wilding is the kind of book that makes you ten times more alert than you were before. Every strewn coffee cup every felled tree every strimmed verge. Short of leaving copies in public places — but nobody reads — my son does, said my neighbour in the fish queue this morning — it's had to know what to do. And what to do is of the essence. Bernard Loughlin, former director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, said it was his privilege to testify to his idealism. He did something. He looked after a place where artists and writers and musicians came to stay. Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell are doing something on Charlie's ancestral 3,500 hectares. We are doing something here.
All of this is easier to believe when the weather is as warm and settled as for the last week or more. Easier to believe that every move has consequences. That there is a natural flux and an unnatural growth. You read Wilding down at the reservoir on a broody warm Wednesday, and you have no idea what may come of it, but feel optimistic.
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