Otterly wonderful
This was such a wonderful opportunity to speak to otter experts all round the country, from ghillies to otter-spotters and pathologists who can tell a good deal about the health of our rivers from their 30-year long project.
I dived into well-loved books, from Tarka the Otter and its crunchy, frosty prose, to Ring of Bright Water and the more recent Otter Country by the poet Miriam Darlington, and Robert Macfarlane’s Lost Songs, and became immersed in verse from Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Do seek out the latter’s 1979 The Otter – a love poem to his wife.
It was also extremely otterly wonderful to make the front page
This wonderful woodcut by Hester Sainsbury was from the first edition of Tarka the Otter in 1927
Here’s the link to the article