New Forest Footsteps

Three fallow deer stand framed by fox gloves; evening light illuminating the hot pinks and green of fresh leaves in a stained-glass scene. All peace and reverence. But the soundtrack doesn’t quite match. Instead of birdsong the evening chorus consists of shouts, cracking cans, bellowing laughter. Human equivalents of territory marking, highlighting food sources, and attempted ‘wooing’s’ in the summer evening’s hazy heat. Longbeech Campsite is full to the brim, but the deer continue browsing, unbothered. As is the New Forest way: humans and wildlife side-by-side.

Longbeech is no stranger to human presence, even before the campers arrived. From 1942-1946 its tree cover harboured the buildings belonging to the airfield that stretched over the gorse-speckled Stoney Cross. The runway remnants today are traversed by ponies and cattle instead of aircraft. When the war was over, and the airfield redundant, the left over Nissen huts took on a new role: accommodation for those awaiting council houses. Families made their homes here, painted the stern grey stone and curved roofs of ex-military outcrop with cartoon characters. They fenced off plots with discarded barbed wire to make small gardens and to keep ponies from pestering. There was even a village hall, which doubled as a cinema on the weekends. An entire community created from the in between, from the waiting. My own Grandma one of them.

A small portion of her life was lived out here. She raised children, cooked meals, loved, laughed, and hurt where revellers now come for their holidays; where I now sit in my own campervan, watching deer in a dappled glade. I can’t help wondering if she stopped in this very same spot I’m sat in now, if she too peered into the space between the trees.

As the darkness takes hold and the foxglove’s colours mute, it strikes me that it’s not just the wildlife and humans brushing against each other here. Each era rubs up against the last. There is nothing new about this forest. Its air is thick with lives lived before, their now presence covered in leaf litter and moss, yet still as tangible as the bark on the trees that watched them come and go. Much like the deer that have now disappeared into their woodland realm, I can no longer see them, but I know they’re there.

Words and Image Jeni Bell

Bath Spa MA Writing Award 2021

Writing is so often over-wrought with worry. Words are woven with the threads of anxieties trailing through them: deadlines, briefs, wordcounts, is it dreamed or dreamt, was that colon the right choice? Behind each sentence, each carefully chosen adjective and metaphor is a writer asking is that right, is it good enough? Am I good enough? Inescapable quandaries that follow us each time we sit down to corral ideas into articles, blogs, books, and screenplays. And there are other worries as well. More practical ones that hover around finding the time to write, getting commissions, getting work out into the world.

Last year, as well as the worries mentioned above, my main concern came in the form of my laptop. It was temperamental to say the least. Choosing to freeze in the middle of an essay, deciding to only charge in certain positions (usually not conducive for writing), it had a habit of crashing at random and refusing to save whatever I had been working on at the time. My hopes to write regular blogs, articles, and begin research for my own book idea became like a buffering screen; unclear, uncertain, and frustrating.

I was not in a position to be able to go out and buy a new one, instead my little laptop was coerced into working through offerings of duct tape and tears. As a freelancer that piece of silver machinery was my office; as a low-residency student it was my only access to education; as a writer, it was my biggest worry.

After the first year on the Nature and Travel Writing MA at Bath Spa University, something had clicked with my writing. I knew that this is what I wanted to do full time, spending my days surrounded by words and using my own to create connections with other people. I also discovered that I am at my happiest when I am learning, which made me worry about the state of my laptop even more.

I had applied for the Bath Spa MA Writing Award, generously sponsored by Jack and Audrey Ladeveze with no expectations, so when the email came in late November to say I had been successful in my application, I was shocked to say the least. Here was an opportunity to move forward with one less worry. The academic year ahead suddenly became less daunting, my own personal projects were refreshed and now accessible.

With a new laptop in my life, one that runs smoothly and doesn’t require begging, pleading or duct tape to do its job, I can spend my days immersed in words. In my application for the award, I explained I had wanted to create connections with my work, not in a business-sense, but in a real human sense, which I hope to achieve in the following ways:

·       Honing my existing writing skills, whilst developing new ones on the Nature and Travel Writing MA, as well as expanding on my understanding of the nature writing genre.

·       Restarting my Seeking Wild Sights blog with regular posts in the hope that readers will be inspired to find their own ways to connect with the wild world.

·       Starting to research and develop my idea for a book – a memoir that explores how it feels to be unsettled in a settled home.

These things, of course, require more than just a laptop. There is time and commitment to be considered, but the release of one pressure has made a dramatic difference to me and I am so thankful to have been the recipient of the 2021 Bath Spa MA writing award. I am not just grateful for the ability to buy a new laptop, but that people believed enough in my work and words. That is armour against anxiety.

As a writer I will always be followed by worries, whether it is writing a tweet, a 3000-word essay, an application or a blog post. And I hope they do stay, I hope I always worry about my choice of words, about the way my syntax sounds, or whether that metaphor fits. I am only glad I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ve got enough duct tape and tears to meet the demands of the technology gods.