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Feeling Through Nature

  • Series
Mixed media collage artwork using a combination of two different photographic prints. The background of the collage is made up of a black and white photograph of the head of a young woman with long dark hair. She is looking off to camera left with a neutral expression on her face. Overlaid on top of her portrait, running through the centre of the image, are horizontal strips of a colour photograph showing a large expanse of open water with the ripples on the surface of the water visible through the light and dark reflections. The horizontal strips are spaced out such that the portrait beneath can be seen through the gaps.
The Water. © Faye Heller for Wellcome Collection.

Nature writer and founder of The Willowherb Review, Jessica J Lee invited contributors to explore the connection between the natural world and wellbeing. The resulting essays range over subjects including gardening, homesickness, hiking, assault, healing, wildness, domestication, overlooked creatures and neglected landscapes. Nature here proves to be anything but a straightforward solace: instead it is a place of mixed emotions, painful recovery, reclaimed knowledge and unexpected beauty.

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姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions

Nina Mingya Powles felt adrift in the UK, living thousands of miles from home. But nurturing familiar tastes and smells in her tiny balcony garden helped her roots begin to grow.

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A little wildness

To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.

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On nature cures and taking the waters

When chilly outdoor swims began to chip away at her depression, Jessica J Lee was drawn to a closer study of the complex natural world around her.

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Finding my body through the wilderness

Writer Jennifer Neal used vigorous exercise classes to try and heal herself in the years following an assault. But it was only while hiking outdoors that she found true strength.

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Between two summers

As Michael Malay tends his allotment, absorbing all the sensations of his surroundings, he finds the repetition of work calms the mind.