In this blog I describe how my local landscape inspires my writing – and I’m borrowing beautiful artwork from my friend and neighbour Julia Ogden to show you some of the landscapes I love. Thank you Julia for letting me include your art like this!
I started writing my new children’s series (coming very soon, more on that shortly!) in the summer of 2020. That strange quiet spring and summer is probably a time we will never forget, for so many different reasons. While front-line workers risked their lives to keep essential services running, many of us were at home trying to adapt to the challenge of living through a pandemic.
Trying to absorb the shock and worry of that time, I realised with new intensity just how much I needed to be outdoors each day for my health and wellbeing. The daily walk of lockdown took on such significance for me. I often walked with my eldest child, who was sixteen at the time. She and I added to our favourite routes, often through the woods and or by the river. We chatted as we walked, and noticed the slow changes of the deepening summer – the blossom coming and going, the grass growing tall. Sometimes we saw deer, or heron, and once we saw a kingfisher in an old millpond.
Sunlight and Bluebells by Julia Ogden
This picture by Julia Ogden seems like a perfect representation of my walks that spring, through bluebell woods, with the soft green light filtering through new leaves, and that incredible violet haze spreading across the forest floor.
I feel so lucky to live here in Hebden Bridge. It’s the town I grew up in, which might partly explain why I love the landscape so much. For me these hills and woods are the definition of wild beauty, to which all other places are compared! I love that there are dozens and dozens of paths threaded through the hills, inviting you to walk and explore here. There are particular historical reasons for that – there used to be many mills tucked into these wooded valleys, and the millworkers travelled to work on foot; while other paths are the remains of much older packhorse routes across the Pennines. When I’m striding across the old stones or up the age-smoothed steps, I like to think of all the people who must have trodden this way before me.
Mist and Valley by Julia Ogden
Another thing I love about this place is the way the landscape changes very quickly – you never get bored on a walk here. In the valley bottom there’s the town with its rivers and canal and roads, then the wooded hillsides which give way to pastureland at a certain point. Then above these strips of fields, there’s moorland, heathery and open, where you can see so much sky and you feel like you are on top of the world.
These pictures of Julia’s capture the atmosphere of both distinctive landscapes, I think. First, here’s the part where the woods and the fields meet. This is a magical place for me, and although I have no idea how she does it, Julia’s art makes me feel the same way as being there, out in the open, with the warm breeze and the grasses tickling my arms, with a bird singing nearby and the distant noise of the traffic rising from the valley below:
Left to right above, Grasses and Woods; Hebden Sky, Looking Home; and Meadow Grasses With Dusk Drawing In all by Julia Ogden
And when you keep walking up, you reach another quite different landscape, as you reach the open moors, with the paths that invite you on, on, on:
It Made Sense When We Walked by Julia Ogden
This painting of the moorland path is called It Made Sense When We Walked, which is basically everything I’ve been trying to say summed up in one neat phrase and one gorgeous image! And that’s what walking in these hills did for me in 2020, as they do for me still, on a daily basis. The landscape makes sense of everything I’m feeling that day, easing my worries, bringing new perspective.
It’s no surprise perhaps that the series I started writing in 2020 became all about wild places and their importance in our lives. I’ll write again soon about my new book, Wildsmith: Into the Dark Forest, which is beautifully illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton. I can’t wait for you to see Joe’s artwork too. Again, I’m in awe of how visual art can do so much, so directly. How it can convey place and emotion and atmosphere in a glance.
So I’ll close by thanking Julia for giving permission to illustrate this blog with her art. You can see more of her lovely work and purchase prints, paintings, cards, silk scarves and more here: https://juliaogden.com/
More soon then! For now, thanks for reading, take good care meanwhile.
Wildsmith: Into the Dark Forest, illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton, is published by UCLan Publishing on 2ndFebruary 2023, £7.99