Cairn Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie is clear in the prologue that this collection is different to her previous, that this collection addresses much more directly the climate change affecting the natural world she so carefully studies and lyrically describes. As a result, along with the nostalgia for her experiences of time spent in nature is added an additional nostalgia for nature itself in the face of the seemingly inevitable decline of the natural world. Perhaps her previous collection (Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie) hinted at these changes in nature, but she has chosen this time to directly confront them, with the results being less a celebration of nature and more a lamentation. Still, she had done this with all her usually poetical craft with the results being a profound collection of essays and poems touching on the very heart of the natural world. This collections of stories form a kind of Cairn itself on the surface of nature writing by providing markers and direction for humankind. It seems inevitable that this Cairn marks the waypoints of our descent into climate crisis, but there is hope that this is not the only time we may pass this Cairn, we may yet pass it again from the other direction on our future road to recovery from the crisis.