Joe Gray's Blog

Making a case for compassionate entomology

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Joe Gray

10 December 2024ABOUT the author

And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
— Gandalf in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’

Here, I make a case for an approach to the study of insects and other arthropods that I will call compassionate entomology. My use of the first term in this construction follows its application in compassionate conservation, where it signifies the explicit consideration of the welfare and intrinsic va...

The lie of the beholder

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Joe Gray

15 October 2024ABOUT the author

This post is part of a series titled ‘Beneath the birch and pine’, whose uniting theme—beyond the writer’s nature-centred standpoint—is the inspiration that each piece finds in some aspect of life in the Scottish Highlands. For an associated photography project, which is called ‘The Cairngorms Up-Close’, please head here.

My aim here is to say something about the ways in which we experience, or behold, wild nature in ...

Size of disappointment: Puzzles on the Moor

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Joe Gray

12 August 2024ABOUT the author

Three summers ago, I typed the words “most probably correct” in closing an Earth Tongues piece titled Smiles and scowles: Puzzles in the Forest. At that point, I felt that I had written all that I was ever going to on the subject of tourists experiencing curious English woodlands. But a recent encounter with an Italian couple, on a misty July morning, has set me writing this unexpected sequel.

The new story finds its begin...

Beware the Batesian rebel

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Joe Gray

4 October 2023ABOUT the author

Mutton chop whiskers. Sweeping grey hair. A slightly-too-large dark jacket. The appearance of Henry Walter Bates, as depicted in a biographical sketch published shortly after his death in February 1892, was very much that of a distinguished Victorian male scientist. And he had indisputably earned his stripes.

The contribution to science for which Bates is best known—as told in that sketch—arose from a trip he took to the A...

Love, existence, and the nature of picture postcards

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Joe Gray

30 September 2023ABOUT the author

This post is part of a series titled ‘Beneath the birch and pine’, whose uniting theme—beyond the writer’s nature-centred standpoint—is the inspiration that each piece finds in some aspect of life in the Scottish Highlands. For an associated photography project, which is called ‘The Cairngorms Up-Close’, please head here.

“Hey, there’s an otter,” I whisper to my wife. “Below the crested tit, and one… two… no three red s...

Beneath the birch and pine: Prelude to a series

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Joe Gray

25 January 2023ABOUT the author

This is the first post in a category titled ‘Beneath the birch and pine’. The uniting theme for this series—beyond the writer’s nature-centred standpoint—will be the inspiration that each piece finds in some aspect of life in the Scottish Highlands. For an associated photography project by the author, which is called ‘The Cairngorms Up-Close’, please head here.

Since the ‘Publish’ button for this first piece was clicked j...

WITNESS: The dissipation of wildness (a personal experience)

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Joe Gray

11 January 2023ABOUT the author

We’ve strangled all her trees and starved her creatures

There’s poison in the sea and in the air

But worst of all we’ve learned to live without her

We’ve lost the very meaning of our lives

And now she’s gonna die

— A verse from Death of Mother Nature Suite by Kansas (1974)

It was shortly after the winter solstice, eight years ago, when I did something that I had done nothing quite like before. Triggered by th...

Inconveniences at the farmers’ market

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Joe Gray

16 December 2022ABOUT the author

A few days ago, in London, I was strolling along a nondescript stretch of pavement, in the direction of a farmers’ market, when I hit my head on the branch of a tree. It was one of those collisions where you find yourself poking at the point of contact in expectation of blood and other subcutaneous leakage, but, in my case, the blow had been lessened by the knitted hat that I was wearing. Winter’s descent, and the necessary...

Bare-faced forestry

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Joe Gray

19 September 2022ABOUT the author

This post is part of a series titled ‘Beneath the birch and pine’, whose uniting theme—beyond the writer’s nature-centred standpoint—is the inspiration that each piece finds in some aspect of life in the Scottish Highlands. For an associated photography project, which is called ‘The Cairngorms Up-Close’, please head here.

It is early autumn, and I am spending the night in woodland on the edge of Loch Tay—a slender S...

A knowledge for thirst: Water, empathy, and kinship

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Joe Gray

26 May 2022ABOUT the author

Let me recount this short tale—a thin slice from my recent life—exacty as it happened.

On a warm afternoon earlier this month, outside an old inn that overlooks an east-coast estuary and that was once owned by a prolific persecutor of witches, I met a recent immigrant to the British Isles. It was immediately obvious that she was nervous in the presence of a new person. Call it a neurosis or a sensible precaution, the habit wa...