Finding Beauty – A Year of Nature Outside Your Door.

Front cover.

Well they are here and I did say in my blog last week that I’d be jumping with joy and I am. The books have arrived back from the printers just in the nick of time for Christmas, but like my dog are for any and all times of the year! ‘Finding Beauty – A Year of Nature Outside Your Door’ is finally ready! In some ways it follows on as a logical sequel to ‘Finding Home – Journeys with the Hillforts of Shropshire’ which was all about connection to place and how I unexpectedly did that through exploring all the ancient Iron Age settlements around me. But this time I stay much closer to home and in order to feel even more rooted, I explore just what’s accessible on foot from my doorstep throughout the wheel of the year.

The start of the book with the ash tree from my bedroom window.

The seeds of this book began back in January 2021 when I started writing monthly articles for the Wenlock Herald about nature in the Old Cemetery here. Initially, I had the idea of writing a book to chart the changes of a year in my visits up to the Old Cemetery, but it quickly became much more than that. The articles for the Herald had a word limit but I found I was writing much more each month to incorporate my walks up there and also my daily walks around the town and so I began charting the changes of the seasons in detail. I published some of them here as blogs on my wordpress site.

Rare bee orchids up on Windmill Hill.

Around the same time I was also part of a project called ‘Library to Lane’ which looked at three prominent local Shropshire women who had explored the history, folklore and landscape here a hundred years ago. Charlotte Burne, author of ‘Shropshire Folklore’,  Georgina Jackson who compiled the Shropshire Word-book and notes for Shropshire Folklore and the poet/novelist Mary Webb who had spent time living in Much Wenlock where I live now. As part of the project I was employed to look into local history, memories of changes in my local landscape and explain how my work as an artist is inspired and affected by my locality in our time. I also made weekly nature noticing videos which you can find on YouTube, taking viewers out onto the pathways that I walked on daily. The writing, blogs, songs and videos all grew and fed into my writing of this book. It merged with my trips to the Old Cemetery and evolved into a monthly chronicle of nature sightings, poetry, photographs, herbal recipes and my experiences and my own memories whilst out walking daily on the many footpaths around my home on Wenlock Edge in Shropshire.

May in the old hollow ways on Wenlock Edge.

The research and writing became a labour of love that I was happy to take on as, for me, the main aim of the book was to share the little moments of beauty that really create a bond to a landscape and to give practical ways to build that connection to the place you find yourself living in, especially if, like me, you are not originally from that place. The reviews I received from authors I respected locally assured me that my intentions had worked.

The Old Cemetery in September.

There’s something magical that happens once you set an intention. Or rather once the intention sets you. With the hillforts book I didn’t have a plan to write a book. Instead I was going to be making a set of art cards for each one, but the land itself had other ideas and filled my dreams and thoughts with songs and poetry and prose until I finally gave in and started to write the book. And that is how I ended up immersing myself in the landscape with an intention, visiting each Iron Age settlement in the county until I’d walked on them all and spent time in each place. At the end of the journey I realised I could not leave because I felt truly at home here. But the work wasn’t over and like all good relationships worth the effort, had to be constantly attended to.

Sunset over the Caradoc from Wenlock Edge.

In many ways like then, as with the writing of ‘Finding Home – Journeys with the Hillforts of Shropshire‘ I was still looking to continue to develop my relationship and connections to my local landscape. Like most modern humans I’ve moved around a bit. Travelling, migrating, emigrating and settling in different places is something we have been doing for generations, whether for work or family, trade or food. Maybe it’s inbuilt into our genes, but for me there has been a sense of separation from nature in my lifetime that I feel as a profound loss and the experiences I had growing up on the north side of Sheffield and the Peak District made deeply embedded and formative narratives in how I relate to the ‘outdoors’ and the natural world as a whole.

Witnessing hares in the fields where I watched them for years is a never to be taken for granted joy.

The ‘playing out’ in the local woods that I took for granted as a kid seems something dangerous and ill-advised now, as if we’re bad parents for even suggesting it. But that’s where I first watched hares leaping and found out where the barn owls hunted and tasted my first sweet bites of fruit scrumped from the hedgerows. Missing out on those initiatory experiences as children sets us in a different mode where ‘indoors’ becomes a boundary and outdoors a fearful threat. It creates a severing of our wild selves and of our connection to the seasons and the plants and animals and resources that our lives depend on. Going out walking every day and noticing little things on my doorstep; little changes in tree growth, plants, flowers; noticing where the deer sleep in the field by the brook and the place where badgers cross the path leaving tracks across the Edge, or where the hares hide in their forms down near the site of the old Roman villa; noticing the quality of light as it shifts throughout the year, the placement of the sun and moon and stars moving in the sky at night above my garden, all give me a foundation and sense of belonging and oneness with the world around me, and I crave it. No, I depend on it, for my sense of peace and well-being.

And so, finally as it says on the back cover…

“What happens if we take time to really look at the place where we live? Visit the same footpaths throughout the passage of the year, build a relationship with the land and witness the little miracles of nature outside our door?

Taking time to notice the small changes every day brings unexpected rewards – perceptions change, connections deepen and a feeling of belonging grows.

Poetry, prose and herbal recipes immerse the reader in the sensual beauty of the natural world on our doorsteps.
You don’t need to go far to find it…you just need to look!”

The back inside cover with the oak tree above Edge Woods where once stood a Bronze Age burial mound

The books are thicker and heavier than Finding Home, and this time, as requested by many who bought my first book, have colour photos for each chapter. It was important to me on printing a book about my love of nature to do so in as ethical a way as possible, so I’ve chosen sustainable paper, stayed with the same local Shropshire printer, with no air miles and real, fair prices were paid for a job well done.  I hope you’ll enjoy the book and accompany me throughout the year…

But don’t just take my word for it, here are some reviews to give you a flavour of what’s in store for the reader …

‘I loved being transported by Jo and being a quiet companion on her walks – enjoying and trusting her enthusiasms and diversions. The reader is shown the small and the marvellous as Jo describes what it is to really know and love a place and to be properly at home.’

Deborah Alma, founder of the Poetry Pharmacy

‘This is a book about observing what lies right under our noses and is a piece of writing for our time, when travelling for far-flung adventures is increasingly problematic.

Finding Beauty is interleaved with acute and detailed nature notes, and then digging further (the metaphor is appropriate), history and ancient history combine to layer the local landscapes close to Jo’s heart. In the process she uncovers a rich litany of place names: Wenlock Edge, Smokey Hole, Farley Dingle, Blakeway Hollow, Homer Head, Barrow, The Downs, Wyke, Wigwig, Sheinwood, Bellhole Hill, Edge Woods…

Finding Beauty has high and musical aims, and buried deep, the worthy echo of Edward Thomas’s writing.’

Andrew Fusek Peters, wildlife photographer, poet and author of Dip

Poem for ‘The Wheel Turns’ chapter 14

‘With patience and insight, Jo Jukes conjures the pleasure and meaning inherent in parts of the natural world we so often overlook. Finding Beauty is inspiring in its clear-eyed insistence on the importance of the under-appreciated – from jackdaws to mosses, hedgerows to chimney pots, and owls to ivy. A song of praise to the commonplace and local that is vital right now.

Kate Innes, author of The Arrowsmith Trilogy and Greencoats

I’m selling on Etsy again in the link below and in local independent bookshops and shops in Shropshire, or you can order directly from me. They cost £17 plus £3.50 postage and packaging.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1614372614/finding-beauty-a-year-of-nature-outside

Back cover.