The Nature of Summer: 4 (Seasons) Paperback

THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2020, SHORTLISTED

Longlisted for the 2020 Highland Book Prize

'[A] beautiful book... [an] exceptional and intense quality of observation glows from every page... A wisdom that we need now, more than ever before.' Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

In the endless light of summer days, and the magical gloaming of the wee small hours, nature in Jim's beloved Highlands, Perthshire and Trossachs heartlands is burgeoning freely, as though there is one long midsummer's eve, nothing reserved. For our flora and fauna, for the very land itself, this is the time of extravagant growth, flowering and the promise of fruit and the harvest to come.

But despite the abundance, as Jim Crumley attests, summer in the Northlands is no Wordsworthian idyll. Climate chaos and its attendant unpredictable weather brings high drama to the lives of the animals and birds he observes. There is also a wild, elemental beauty to the land, mountains, lochs, coasts and skies, a sense of nature at its very apex during this, the most beautiful and lush of seasons. Jim chronicles it all: the wonder, the tumult, the spectacle of summer.