Nightingale dreams and The Price Of Dormice
We are pleased to share this post written by Steve Lunn who is a hands-on conservationist and re-wilder, and the author of The Price of Dormice.
The RSPB has 1.2 million members, and some 18,000 volunteers. The Mammal Society is tiny in comparison: some two thousand experts and enthusiasts - mammalogists, ecologists, conservationists. But they are all, in some sense, active volunteers. Many work towards better understanding of our mammals and the conservation challenges they face. Many work in practical ways to support mammals and the other living things that share their space in their daily struggles with such challenges. Many do both.
Our wildlife faces a daily onslaught, and most of that onslaught comes directly or indirectly from human activity. My first novel, The Price of Dormice, tells a story - completely fictional - of a group of ordinary people fighting to protect two small colonies of hazel dormice from one of the worst manifestations of such human activity - the bulldozers of over-development. These dormice live on a fictional nature reserve on land that was once Oxford's green belt, since reclassified as 'reserved for' or 'allocated to' development by a local authority that seems ready to ignore the strongest objections from the Environment Agency, wildlife organisations and many others, to push through endless massive executive housing projects, science parks, techno-incubator hubs, etc., in a hangover from the previous governments' plan to create the UK's answer to Silicon Valley, the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Arc.
People need homes and jobs, of course. But we need the right homes and the right jobs in the right places. We need infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries and sewage treatment capacity in place before the kids are at the school gate, the doctors have all gone down with stress, and the loos are first flushed - not three decades later. And we need to respect and protect the creatures with whom we share our space on the planet.
So The Price of Dormice is more a story about people than about dormice: on one hand, people who believe that dormice have just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we do; and on the other, already very well-heeled people who believe that money will make their lives better.
I'm a 'Friend' of Burgess Field, a council-owned reserve between Oxford's Port Meadow and the railway. Forty-five years ago it was an active municipal dump. The council capped it with clay and planted trees, many of which died from methane poisoning. They installed vents, planted more trees, and it's now a lovely place, peaceful and full of birdsong and blossom in spring, a haven for summer and winter visitors and migrants, with lots of rabbits, some muntjac, foxes, and badgers, and various small mmamals, my favourite being the pygmy shrews. It used to have roe deer, but when a new railway siding between Oxford and Wolvercote destroyed a strip of scrub thirty feet wide and two miles long, the roe faded.
I and my fellow Friends do a lot of habitat creation and maintenance work on scrub, hedges, trees, flowers, working within a developing long-term vision that goes by the name 'Nightingale Dreams' (though 'Dormouse Dreams' would be as good). We try to look forward to what happen over the next fifty years, and steer our planting and tending towards habitat like managed thickets that might suit passing nightingales and, with the reserve's plentiful seeding herbs, turtle doves; thickets and hazel coppice that might suit dormice; and encouraging more poplars around those already there, so that golden orioles pushed north by overheating in Europe might find suitable lodging. We find this long-term vision inspiring. We know full well that these 'star attraction' species may never bless us with their presence, but the work we do for them will be good for lots of other species too. And we're quite sure that many of the current Friends won't be around to see it come to fruition, but have faith that someone will, with two legs or four.
I grew up on the edge of Langwith, a mining village in north-east Derbyshire. I was always more at home in the woods and fields, the scrub and the stream-side tangles, than anywhere else. My first jobs, in school holidays and gap year, were on hill farms. Later I worked in systems design, then in educational research and teaching. But I've always been active in conservation, and in creative writing.
Since giving up paid employment I've spent several years learning how to write fiction. I wanted to combine my passions for writing and nature; I wanted to write the sort of book that I most like to read; and I wanted to write from what I know, including my background in educational research at the OU, where we explored how learning could be seen as increasingly competent participation in communities of practice.
I wrote The Price of Dormice to bring these ideas to life in a book that was entertaining, funny and serious. The story takes certain values and ways of thinking and acting as read, which readers might come to share without necessarily noticing. This project will continue. A sequel, working title The Tufton Street Massacre, is in development, and there will be more. Alongside these novels, I'll continue writing short stories of more general interest, the first collection of which, We're Not Getting Divorced and other stories, came out just a week after The Price of Dormice. Both available from all good booksellers now!
Written by Steve Lunn
Please note that the opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of the Mammal Society.