Early in <strong>Nature Cure</strong> Richard Mabey returns continually to the swift who inits spectacular migration may not touch down for well over a year. In... » 

Early in Nature Cure Richard Mabey returns continually to the swift who inits spectacular migration may not touch down for well over a year. In TedHughess phrase the reappearance of the swifts tells us that the globesstill working. When we encounter the author in the opening pages of thispowerful memoir his corner of the globe is decidedly not working. A deepdepression has left him alienated from his work and his family financiallyinsecure and has cost him the Chiltern home in which he has lived his entirelife. The open flatlands of his new home in East Angliaan area now dominatedby agriculture and once so desolate that it harbored an inland lighthousecould not be more different from the dense Chiltern woods he is leaving behind.Mabey wonders frankly if this move is a crucial part of his becoming finallya true adult or if it is just the latest step in the wrong direction his lifehas mysteriously taken. Mabey fears that he like the swift may be toospecializedgiven to an intensely specific way of life which when threatenedleaves him with nowhere to turn. A life spent observing nature has taught himthat any creature even an entire species might be made suddenly obsolete bythe shifts of the world. Just how adaptable is he? He leaves the Chilterns witha nearcomplete set of the works of John Clare and an antique microscope butwithout a frying pan. From now on he will have to think about a complete lifenot just those bases he touched as a writer following his calling. It isthrough this escape to another life this flitting that his healing beginsin often unexpected ways. Mabeys despair stems from an inability to connectwith hiswriting and with the nature that inspires it the books power lies inthe way he relates this distance from nature to a larger problem in modernlifeand in the remarkable process by which his reengagement with nature leadsMabey out of his depression and back to passion and wonder. «