Jim Crumley – författare

Spring is nature’s season of rebirth and rejuvenation. Earth’s northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun, winter yields to intensifying light and warmth, and a wild, elemental beauty transforms the Highland landscape and a repertoire of islands from Colonsay to Lindisfarne. Jim Crumley chronicles the wonder, tumult and spectacle of that transformation, but he shows too that it is no Wordsworthian idyll that unfolds. Climate chaos brings unwanted drama to the lives of badger and fox, seal and seabird and raptor, pine marten and sand martin. Jim lays bare the impact of global warming and urges us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.

The Great Wood of Caledon - the historic native forest of Highland Scotland - has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable, sun-snuffing shroud, a Highlandswide jungle infested by wolf, lynx, bear, beaver, wild white cattle, wild boar, and wilder painted men.Jim Crumley shines a light into the darker corners of the Great Wood, to re-evaluate some of the questionable elements of its reputation, and to assess the possibilities of its partial resurrection into something like a national forest. The book threads a path among relict strongholds of native woodland, beginning with a soliloquy by the Fortingall Yew, the one tree in Scotland that can say of the hey-day of the Great Wood 5,000 years ago: ''I was there.'' The journey is enriched by vivid wildlife encounters, a passionate and poetic account that binds the slow dereliction of the past to an optimistic future.

In late November, 1893, a humpback whale - as rare a sight in the North Sea then as it would be now - followed herring shoals into the Tay estuary, and travelled as far upstream as Dundee docks to linger in the home waters of the biggest whaling fleet in Britain, and one of the biggest in Europe. The whale became an instant celebrity, known simply as the Monster, but a handful of boats were launched to try and catch it. The hunt was farcical, protracted, and ultimately grotesque - the whale remained elusive for four weeks before towing six vessels out past the Bell Rock lighthouse. All the lines parted in building seas and the whale escaped, but it was mortally wounded and was found floating off Stonehaven on January 6, bristling with ironmongery.After a public auction was held for the corpse, the whale was hauled to Dundee. The public was charged sixpence or a shilling to see it, special trains were run from all over Angus, Perthshire and Fife, and for three shillings they could have their photograph taken sitting at a table inside the whale's propped open mouth.The whale was immortalised by the poetry of William McGonagall and went on tour by train on a specially built cradle to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Edinburgh, before returning to Dundee. Its skeleton was presented to Dundee Museum, despite lucrative offers from big museums in London, Europe and America. The Winter Whale is a remarkable historical set piece, a product of its time, although even then public opinion was divided between glee and outrage, pro-whaler and pro-whale.

New and updated edition.In 1743, according to legend, the last wolf in Scotland was killed by a huntsman near Inverness. Long regarded in folk takes and history as a slayer of babies, a robber of graves, a devourer of battlefield dead, its extinction was widely celebrated. But since then, deer have multiplied, destroying the vegetation on which an array of wildlife depends, and it is clear that the entire Highland ecosystem has been thrown off balance by the elimination of a top predator.Jim Crumley believes the old stories are pure fiction – a distortion of reality which prevents people from thinking rationally about the huge benefits wolves could bring. With reference to wolves in other cultures and places, from the south-west of England to Scandinavia and North America, this is a passionate polemic which argues for the return of the wolf to heal the damaged land.

This beautiful record, on fine paper, is Crumley's homage to these noble creatures, but it is also an elegy, a love song to one swan whose silent tragedy he watched from one season to the next.‘A small mound on white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan.’With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers.Crumley watches, year in year out, as a pair of mute swans struggles, against the odds, to raise young on a wild patch of lock. But the pen starts to lose her eggs to predators; and the cob begins to disappear for longer and longer periods. Until comes the day when a third swan, stronger and younger than the first pen, appears at the other end of the loch.This journal of a swan-watcher, as he calls himself, is an elegy to these noble creatures; and most poignantly it is a memorial to one swan, whose silent drama he has recorded.

The Great Wood of Caledon – the historic native forest of Highland Scotland – has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable, sun-snuffing shroud, a Highlandswide jungle infested by wolf, lynx, bear, beaver, wild white cattle, wild boar, and wilder painted men.Jim Crumley shines a light into the darker corners of the Great Wood, to re-evaluate some of the questionable elements of its reputation, and to assess the possibilities of its partial resurrection into something like a national forest. The book threads a path among relict strongholds of native woodland, beginning with a soliloquy by the Fortingall Yew, the one tree in Scotland that can say of the hey-day of the Great Wood 5,000 years ago: 'I was there.' The journey is enriched by vivid wildlife encounters, a passionate and poetic account that binds the slow dereliction of the past to an optimistic future.

Writer and photographer, Seton Gordon, wrote 27 books over a period of several decades and most of these focused on the landscape and wildlife of the Highlands. Of all these books, one of the most acclaimed was Days with the Golden Eagle. Seton Gordon was among the first to observe in some detail - through countless hours in his hide - the daily life of this magnificent bird and to present in his books an account of their habitat, diet and behaviour. But his writing was much more than that - his books are interwoven with acute observation and his narrative possesses a clarity that ensures the reader sees as much as Seton Gordon himself saw. From life day to day on the eyrie, through the different Scottish landscapes and the interaction of the eagles with other wildlife - it is all covered, and all in his inimitable style:''The eagle as she broods on her eyrie in this country of wild primeval forest has an inspiring view. She looks across to the high tops and sees the early morning sun flood the snowy slopes with rosy light. She hears from the forest below her the soft bubbling notes of the amorous blackcock at their fighting-ground, and the wild clarion call of the missel-thrush as he greets the April dawn. Other sounds she hears: the hoarse bark of a hind, the curious sneezing cry of a capercaillie on some pine tree, the distant melody of curlew and golden plover on the brown moorland, the becking of a cock grouse as he shakes the frosty dew from his plumage. I remember once spending a night beside an eagle at the eyrie and seeing the first sun-flush burn upon her golden head, so that it was no longer golden but deep rose coloured; and so I like to picture that lonely eyrie on many calm, sunny days when spring is young and when all the life of the lonely upland places is commencing slowly to stir to the increasing power of the sun.''

'Like many a Highland glen, the Fathan Ghlinne should be wooded but isn't. But I have sat long and often and listened to the ancient river speech, to the windsong of three birches and a rowan, the rowan above a meeting of waterfalls which should be a portentous place. And the word on the wind and in the speech of the river is that the trees and wolves and the people will be back.' Thus Jim Crumley concludes this remarkable book of nature writing. The setting is largely Highland Perthshire (there are startling asides to Mull and Alaska), the author's home for several years, and where, having 'chased a rainbow' that faded early he stayed on and put down a root that nourished his nature writer's instincts. Something Out There is Jim Crumley's account of his quest to rediscover something of the ancient bond between man and nature. It is told in prose that is three-quarters of the way to poetry, and in the process gives the art of nature writing a bold new standard bearer for the 21st century.

This is the work of a man who has known and loved the Scottish Cairngorms for more than 30 years. Jim Crumley marries a poet's instincts to an uncompromising passion for the Cairngorm's arctic character, and for those wildlife tribes which thrive there. He marks nature's rhythms with thoughtful observations of bird and beast, flower and landscape. In the process he strives for a purer empathy with the wilds, seeks out the nourishing bond of man and landscape. Ultimately, the book asserts that the Cairngorms are nature's place. Crumley proposes a radical solution to safeguard the mountains from a threatening array of forces ranged against them. In his conclusion he invokes what Seton Gordon called "the spirit of the high and lonely places".

This is a mixture of folk-tale, magic, myth, love story and hymn of praise to the natural world of Scotland's high and low lands, their landscapes and creatures, and the poet-guardians who timelessly maintain their care for them. It is the legend-story of the mysterious Wanderer, who comes from the North to Striveling (Stirling) and its great Castle Rock, and the tales he tells to the five men and a woman who befriend him there. Who is this Wanderer, who seems ageless, who has profound affinities with animals and birds, who can take on the shape of swans and what is his mission to the South? Who are these friends, whose friendship becomes more, as they begin to realize that they are part of the strange, timeless and mythic destiny of a country older than civilization? What is the meaning of the unearthly love of the Wanderer and the mysterious Bella?

“The best nature writer working in Britain today.” – The Los Angeles Times. Eagles, more than any other bird, spark our imaginations. These magnificent creatures encapsulate the majesty and wildness of Scottish nature. But change is afoot for the eagles of Scotland: the golden eagles are now sharing the skies with sea eagles after a successful reintroduction programme. In ‘The Eagle’s Way’, Jim Crumley exploits his years of observing these spectacular birds to paint an intimate portrait of their lives and how they interact with each other and the Scottish landscape. Combining passion, beautifully descriptive prose and the writer’s 25 years of experience, ‘The Eagle’s Way’ explores the ultimate question - what now for the eagles? - making it essential reading for wildlife lovers and eco-enthusiasts.

"An utter delight" - Jennifer Tetlow. Renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with some of Britain’s most iconic and loved animals – here, the fox. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim describes some of his most memorable encounters with British wildlife – and reveals the startling ways they continually adapt to the relentless encroachment of humans on their habitats. The Encounters in the Wild series not only offers insights into their extraordinary lives, but also considers the conservation efforts to protect them and how the future looks for these much loved animals.

An utter delight - Jennifer Tetlow. In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the skylark. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

"An utter delight" - Jennifer Tetlow. In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the kingfisher. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

Spring is nature’s season of rebirth and rejuvenation. Earth’s northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun, winter yields to intensifying light and warmth, and a wild, elemental beauty transforms the Highland landscape and a repertoire of islands from Colonsay to Lindisfarne. Jim Crumley chronicles the wonder, tumult and spectacle of that transformation, but he shows too that it is no Wordsworthian idyll that unfolds. Climate chaos brings unwanted drama to the lives of badger and fox, seal and seabird and raptor, pine marten and sand martin. Jim lays bare the impact of global warming and urges us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.

In the abiding light of summer, the nature in Jim Crumley’s heartlands of Scotland is burgeoning freely. Seals sing, brown hares bound, dragonflies dance. His silent vigils reveal not only an enchanting account of summer’s exuberant profusion, but the unfolding climate chaos. From declining puffin populations to the demise of entire glaciers, this is a world in crisis ... and of everyday miracles on land, mountains, lochs, coasts and skies. Jim Crumley’s intimate portraits branch out beyond the heart of the Highlands to memories of summers past: from kittiwake cliffs in far-flung St Kilda to the pure wilderness of Arctic Norway, where sea eagles rule. The Nature of Summer explores what is at stake as our seasons are pushed beyond nature’s limits.

In the abiding light of summer, the nature in Jim Crumley’s heartlands of Scotland is burgeoning freely. Seals sing, brown hares bound, dragonflies dance. His silent vigils reveal not only an enchanting account of summer’s exuberant profusion, but the unfolding climate chaos. From declining puffin populations to the demise of entire glaciers, this is a world in crisis ... and of everyday miracles on land, mountains, lochs, coasts and skies. Jim Crumley’s intimate portraits branch out beyond the heart of the Highlands to memories of summers past: from kittiwake cliffs in far-flung St Kilda to the pure wilderness of Arctic Norway, where sea eagles rule. The Nature of Summer explores what is at stake as our seasons are pushed beyond nature’s limits.

The Lake District is one of our busiest national parks. Many people believe that wildness is long gone from the fells, lakes, tarns and becks, yet, within its boundaries, Jim Crumley sets out to prove them wrong – to find “a new way of seeing and writing about this most seen and written about of landscapes".With a naturalist’s eye and a poet’s instinct he is drawn to Lakeland’s turned-aside places where nature still thrives, from low-lying shores to a high mountain oakwood that’s not even on the map. Through backwaters and backwoods, Crumley traces this captivating land’s place in the evolution of global conservation and pleads the case for a far-reaching reappraisal of all of Lakeland’s wildness.

Longlisted for the 2022 Highland Book PrizeFrom Jim Crumley, the "pre-eminent Scottish nature-writer” (Guardian), this landmark volume documents the extraordinary natural life of the Scottish Highlands and bears witness to the toll climate chaos is already taking on our wildlife, habitats and biodiversity – laying bare what is at stake for future generations. A display of head-turning autumn finery on Skye provokes Jim Crumley to contemplate both the glories of the season and how far the seasons themselves have shapeshifted since his early days observing his natural surroundings.After a lifetime immersed in Scotland's landscapes and enriched by occasional forays in other northern lands, Jim has amassed knowledge, insight and a bank of memorable imagery chronicling the wonder, tumult and spectacle of nature’s seasonal transformations. He has witnessed not only nature’s unparalleled beauty, but also how climate chaos and humankind has brought unwanted drama to wildlife and widespread destruction of ecosystems and habitats.In this landmark volume, Jim combines lyrical prose and passionate eloquence to lay bare the impact of global warming and urge us all towards a more daring conservation vision that embraces everything from the mountain treeline to a second spring for the wolf.

“If you have been still enough for long enough, your eyes will have attuned and begun to read the sea-surge fluently, so you recognize the blunt curve and flourished tail of a diving otter. Home your eyes in on that portion of the sea, permit nothing else to move, and you will see the otter eel-catching, resurfacing.”It is a special privilege and a richly rewarding experience to observe a wild animal hunting, interacting with its young or its mate, exploring its habitat, or escaping a predator. To watch wildlife, it’s essential not only to learn an animal’s ways, the times and places you may find it, but also to look inward: to station yourself, focus, and wait. The experience depends on your stillness, silence, and full attention, watching and listening with minimal movement and if possible staying downwind so that your presence is not sensed. With decades of close observation of wild animals and birds, Jim Crumley has found himself up close and personal with many of our most elusive creatures, studying their movements, noting details, and offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives. Here, he draws us into his magical world, showing how we can learn to watch wildlife well, and what doing so can mean for our ability to care for it, and care for ourselves.

A lyrical and personal account of Jim Crumley’s lifelong quest to find harmony in nature and to hold nature at the centre of his every thought and action as he celebrates our precious planet.Renowned nature writer Jim Crumley draws on more than six decades of immersion in wild landscapes to explore the profound harmony at the heart of the natural world—and why it matters now more than ever.With the lyrical clarity and passionate advocacy that have made him Scotland’s foremost nature commentator, Crumley weaves together close observation, personal encounters, and ecological insight to reveal nature as a vast, interconnected symphony. He argues that our survival depends on relearning how to listen to the land, to recognise our place within the great orchestration of life rather than apart from it. Through evocative prose built on his expertise and care, Crumley urges us to defend the beauty and balance of the living world, offering both a celebration and a clarion call. Symphonic is a vital testament from a writer whose life’s work is a passionate defence and celebration of nature’s enduring—and endangered—harmony.

In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife. With his inimitable passion and vision, he relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives. “The moon climbed high above the trees beyond the far side of the field, contriving a night of raw, primitive beauty out of the still-lingering wisps of mist, the pale, tumbling curves of field, the parallel inked-in blue-black curves of the hedges, the quiet and surprisingly pale shades of the distant firth. Tawny owls stabbed at the darkness with sharp, two-syllable shrieks. Then there was a hare, far down the field. It ran easily out into the moonlight from the hedge on the far side and at once it was partnered in dance by its own giant shadow.”

In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife. With his inimitable passion and vision, he relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives. “The birches, the larches, the mountain grasses and the reed bed are all afire, sparkling after sleety rain and in fitful sunlight. It is as if nature has contrived its finest theatrical stage set and then turned up the colour. There are stags roaring, for it is the season of the red deer rut. There are golden eagles in the mountains, peregrines and ravens on nearby crags, and otters on the river. Every spring, reliably at the nesting season, the place floods spectacularly. I have come here to watch a pair of mute swans.”

In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife. With his inimitable passion and vision, he relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives. “Suddenly the boar’s face was back, peering up from almost ground level beneath the lowest sweep of the spruce branches. Almost at once, the sow was right beside him. Then came the cubs. For perhaps ten seconds, no more, all four faces gleamed garishly out of the forest at me. They looked like nothing so much as characters in a puppet theatre and an absurd image came into my head of the puppet master crouched behind them, dangling two puppet masks on strings from each hand. In all my badger encounters, nothing has charmed me so utterly as those ten seconds.”

In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife. With his inimitable passion and vision, he relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives. “The barn owl is an ambassador for life on the edge. It is the night owl that also hunts fearlessly by day; the silent flier with a sudden shriek that can shatter glass; the restless sentry of the outside edge of the woods with one ear attuned to the grassy banks and the other to the first and last tree shadows; the stone-still embellishment on a country kirkyard gravestone beyond the edge of the village, looking in moonlight like nothing so much as the sculptor’s final inspired flourish.”

"Sublime writing… a genuinely important book” - Ken Lussey. Hundreds of years after their extinction in these isles, beavers are back in Britain. These highly skilled engineers of the natural world have been reintroduced at several sites across the UK and, even as they become established, are already having a dramatic effect on our wild landscapes. Here, leading nature writer Jim Crumley reveals the pioneering lifestyle of these intriguing and secretive creatures and considers the ecological and economic impact of the beaver reintroductions. Employing his trademark beautiful prose and empathy for life in the wild, Crumley considers the future for Britain’s beavers and makes the case for giving them their freedom.

"An utter delight" - Jennifer Tetlow. In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the swan. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

"An utter delight" - Jennifer Tetlow. In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the hare. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

During winter, dark days of wild storms can give way to the perfect, glistening stillness of frost-encrusted winter landscapes – it is the stuff of wonder and beauty, of nature at its utmost. In The Nature of Winter, Jim Crumley ventures into our countryside to experience firsthand the chaos and the quiet solitude of nature’s rest period. He bears witness to the lives of remarkable animals such as golden eagles, red deer and even whales as they battle intemperate weather and the turbulence of climate change. In the snow Jim discovers ancient footsteps that lead him to reflect on the journey of his personal nature-writing life – a journey that takes in mountain legends, dear departed friends and an enduring fascination and deep love for nature. Simply, he evokes winter in all its drama, in all its pathos, in all its glory.