What I’ve been reading this week, 4 July 2020

Nature should be for everyone, building a sustainable outdoor community, locked bothies, and Microsoft Editor.

Environment and nature

Nature Should Be For Everyone – Not Just A Privileged Few – Anita Sethi: ‘It is a fundamental misconception that we are separate from nature when in fact we are each and every one of us a part of it – and each of us must respect and care for nature which in turn cares for us. When this pandemic is over, I hope the world will be better, fairer.’

A Sense of Place – Merryn Glover writes about her year as Writer in Residence at the Cairngorms National Park.

The sorrowful tale of Little Mo the moorhen chick – a wildlife drama from Mark Horrell.

Outdoors

Building a sustainable outdoor community after COVID-19 – this is one of the best things I’ve read all week. ‘We need to face the fact that a lot of our outdoor culture is very destructive, and the athlete and adventurer lifestyle is a massive influencer in that. The flip side is that as soon as we start changing this, we’ll see widespread change throughout our community.’

Planning to wild camp this weekend? Read this first – a summary of advice on the current situation regarding wild camping from The Great Outdoors.

Mountain bothies remain closed despite imminent easing of travel limits – bothy culture is in a delicate place at the moment. I fear that we will permanently lose several bothies before all this is over. Please treat them with respect, and don’t use MBA bothies for the time being.

Gelder Shiel Bothy Locked – exhibit A.

Testing Gear During Lockdown – Chris Townsend writes about how he’s approached testing gear for TGO during the lockdown period.

Falling in love again… Returning to Howling Ridge on Carrauntoohil – Stephen McAuliffe has been back up into the Magillycuddy Reeks for the first time since March.

Books, writing and editing

What’s e-new? Microsoft Editor – Andy Coulson writes for the Charted Institute of Editing and Proofreading blog about the new Microsoft Editor feature in Word: ‘Editor will help many writers but tends towards homogenised text. This still leaves plenty of room for human editors to bring out the nuance and texture in the writing, and also to deal with the narrative thread through a piece of writing.’

Miscellaneous

How to See, in Four Minutes – this is certainly worth four minutes of your time.

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