The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future

by Stephen Rutt

A soaring celebration of summer and a poignant journey into the changing nature of the British season – from the award-winning author of Wintering and The Seafarers.

Summer is traditionally a time of plenty, of warmth; a time to celebrate abundance. And so Stephen Rutt sets out to explore the natural world during its moment of fullest bloom. Butterflies and dragonflies add colour to his days; moths and bats lift the warm nights; swallows, nightjars and wood warblers fill the forests and skies.

What Stephen notices too, however, are the many ways in which the season is becoming deranged by a changed and changing climate: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time; August days as cold as February; the creeping disturbances that we may not notice while nature still has some voice.

The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and a warning of the unravelling of this beautiful web of abundant life. This is a book that sings with love and careful observation, with an eye on all that we might lose but also save.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Birds, Natural History, British Literature

227 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Eternal Season is an evocative and fascinating exploration of the changing nature of a British summer published at the height of the season. None of us will ever forget the summer of 2020. For Stephen Rutt it meant an enforced stay in rural Bedfordshire, before he could return again to the familiar landscapes of Scotland’s Dumfries. But wherever he found himself, he noted the abundance of nature teeming in our hedgerows, marshlands and woodlands – the birds, butterflies, moths and dragonflies, bats, frogs and plants that characterise the British summer. Summer – the eternal season of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 – is a season that transcends its boundaries. It was while walking down the bank of the River Nith, one October day, day-dreaming about blackcaps, that he realised what he thought he knew about the season was wrong. He was dazzled by hawthorn berries and the integral role summer had played in autumn’s bounty.

He had planned to go in search of summer, beginning in January with a blackcap in a gale in Liverpool, a chiffchaff in a Cornish blizzard… and then a pandemic put a halt to that. With all his plans cancelled, he was able instead to watch the long and slow unfolding of a summer, an exceptional summer of sunshine and heat and worry. He could watch the lengthening light, the leaves unfurling and the migrant birds arriving. These progressions become the rhythm of the season. Or should. Yet in his explorations of the landscapes and wildlife at the height of the year, he also began to see disturbances to the traditional rhythms of the natural world: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time, disruption to habitats and breeding, the myriad ways climate change is causing a derangement of the seasons.

The Eternal Season is both a celebration of summer and an observation of the delicate series of disorientations that we may not always notice while some birds still sing, while nature still has some voice, but that may be forever changing our perception of the heady days of summer. What happens when that goes wrong? When the rhythm falls out of sync? It is a tracing out of the gap between what should be and what is happening. By looking at summer through wildlife, landscape and historical nature writing, it shows us how we can see, know and really feel what’s happening to nature now. It is a work of joy, despair, confusion, and ultimately, unexpectedly, hope. It is a biodiverse work, focusing on the trees, plants, dragonflies, butterflies, moths and arachnids that share the summer with our familiar birds. This is a poignant and evocative look at the changing patterns of nature, usual summer species and the seasons which have been impacted by climate change and the human toll. A captivating, richly compelling and impeccably researched book. Highly recommended.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Rutt was visiting family in Bedfordshire when the national lockdown was announced in March 2020. What was supposed to be a short visit became a much longer stay as they could not return to his home in Dumfries. It was a time of anxiety for many people and in particular for Rutt and his partner as they are medically vulnerable people too. It felt like his spring had been stolen and the book he was originally going to write on warblers became this on summers past and future.

He like so many others during the pandemic sought some solace in the natural world. You would expect that from a nature writer, but Rutt has a keener eye than most and one of the things that he begins to notice is the way that the seasons are being changed and moulded by the growing disaster that is climate change. In the past, there was a sense of order to things, cold winter days reset life each year and as the light increased during spring warmth and life flooded back into the world. Now we can get days in December that are as warm as July and rain in June that can be as bad as the worst of the winter storms.

How much the season and blending into each other was brought home in two instances he recounts. In the first he is in a friends garden with and that friend spots a browncap in the mahonia. It is the first he has seen overwintering in the UK. The second instance is on a break in Cornwall in February. The sky turned from grey to pewter and then the snow started to fall. A postman they passed, said he had not seen snow for 30 years there. The birds that would be deep in the scrub were everywhere searching for food, including a chiffchaff.

Until that point, he had considered both of these summer birds. They were there because they had adapted, rather they could stay in the UK because the climate was changing and it was more conducive for them to remain rather than travel south. Part of the world is getting weirder and the once familiar order of things is changing. It is happening at a speed that we cannot get used to either. It is on another trip to visit family that they become stuck as a national lockdown is enforced. They will be in Bedford for the foreseeable future with no option to return home. As worrying as it is, it does give him the time to ponder the way that the world is changing.

Being stuck in because of being medically vulnerable means that he has to rely on technology to move him to the places that he wants to see. Looking at these places on the screen gives him a stronger longing to go and see them in person when he is able to. Seeing them from a screen though also gives him time to think about phenology, The science of recording when things happen and to see how and if they move year on year. It is also a useful tool to see how a changing climate is affecting vast swathes of wildlife as the normal synchronisations fall out of place.

He does manage to make it out of the house they are locked down in for his one hour of permitted exercise, it helps with the natural history fix that he needs. The quieter roads with people forced to stay home mean that wildlife that you wouldn’t normally see is suddenly much more visible to an almost silent walker. He is surprised by a Little Owl and comes face to face with a Chinese Water Deer. As they pass the summer solstice they have the opportunity to return home to Scotland and restart their lives in a world that has changed.

This is another fine book from Rutt, he is not yet 30 and has written three! It is more personal than his first two and written with a wistful melancholy that the lockdown gave him. I like the way that he uses short essays on a variety of subjects from nightjars to spiders to how much wetter everything is getting in between the chapters. It is a book to make you think too, think about what we are doing to this planet, the changes that we are having on delicate and fragile ecosystems and what the long term implications are for us as a species.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set against the backdrop of the COVID Pandemic, this book is how one birder handles the lockdown and how he coped without his usual access to nature. Being put into this situation he starts to notice nature in a different way, species that turn up early or not at all, foreign species that usually live in warm climates and the impact the changing seasons are having on all of nature, from the wee tiny bugs to the majestic birds up in the sky.

I’ve read Rutt’s two previous books and his love for birds really shone through, here he takes things once step further and shares with us his love of all nature…even if it is a thing from nightmares (Yes, there is such a thing as a Wasp Spider) Just like with his previous books Rutt takes a subject that in the wrong hands could become dry and dull, by sharing his love for these animals and plants adds a real poetic edge to his words. I read his blog too and don’t think I’ll ever get bored with his writing.

In this book Rutt ends up stuck in Bedfordshire during the first lockdown and spends his time exploring the area fully, something he probably wouldn’t have been able to do without the presence of the lockdown. The next part of the book he is back home and trying to fit back in with his surroundings, realising what he has missed and seeing new things for the first time. Amongst all these experiences is the concern of climate change, researching the species that are losing out, those that are making the most of the situation and those invading species and the damage they do, not least the distraction of their presence makes us not notice those that have vanished.

My favourite part of this book is when Rutt points out that during the lockdown people were saying that nature was starting to heal, Rutt thinks that was not entirely true, it was just that nature has been given a chance to shout loud enough for us to hear. Brilliant thought. This book really makes you realise you need to get out there and witness these creatures and events in nature before it’s too late…alas I’m just no good at spotting these things, it’s just too slow a process for me to remember the identity of what I have seen, I need to find some kind of course I can go on to help me learn, I wish this was the sort of thing I was taught at school, would have been so much more fun than drama. This is a powerful book that will inspire you to get out there and look in hedgerows and wild plants to see what you can find, before finishing this review I popped out with the dog to see what I could find, I saw lots of weird little bugs and the only one that stayed still long enough for me to photograph was these:

Blog review here (Photos can be seen on the blog): https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future is naturalist Stephen Rutt's third book. His newest effort is set against the background of the pandemic, which has so affected us all since the beginning of 2020. As with many of us, it stopped Rutt's plans in their tracks, preventing him from travelling across Britain's woods and forests, and following warblers, the intended initial focus of this book. A Suffolk-born resident of the Scottish market town of Dumfries, Rutt spent the first few months of the pandemic living with his partner's family, during an 'enforced stay' in rural Bedfordshire.

Like many of us, Rutt turned to the constancy of nature during the first summer of the pandemic - and he found anything but. Wherever he was physically during this year, he spent his time noting 'the abundance teeming in our hedgerows, marshlands and woodlands'. In his close communication with the nature around him, though, he began to notice 'disturbances to the traditional rhythms of the natural world: the wrong birds singing at the wrong time, disruption to habitats and breeding, [and] the myriad ways climate change is causing a derangement of the seasons.' What came out of lockdown for Rutt was The Eternal Season, in which he both celebrates the summer season, and observes the 'delicate series of disorientations that we may not always notice.'

In his introduction, Rutt writes: 'Birds have always been the focus of my passion for nature and they always will be. But the summer does not belong to them alone; there is a full spectrum of life to consider that can seem largely absent from the winter months: the butterflies and dragonflies that add colour to the days; the moths that haunt the warm nights and the swooping bats that pick them off; the unforgettable arachnids and amphibians that lurk in ignored corners.' He goes on, commenting: 'Our summer wildlife is the filter through which we can see what's really happening in our seasons', as it tends to have a far-reaching knock-on effect. As Rutt sets out, 'A bird you look at is no longer just a bird but one of an intertwined series of forces, capable of being expressed as statistics, that explain the terribly restless, indecent state of the world.'

One of the real strengths of The Eternal Season regards the way in which Rutt writes of his surroundings. On his 'allowed daily exercise', as he walks in a Bedfordshire wood, he recounts: 'A muntjac disappeared through a brief blizzard of blossom, driven from the blackthorn by the breeze. Cowslips and primroses and their hybrid, the false oxlips, spangled the edge of the track with stars of lemon and butter. Leafwards, I slipped into a green hypnosis.'

As a 'locked-down naturalist' trying to make the best of things, he turns to the Internet, exploring by way of Google and Ordnance Survey maps. He writes at length about the challenges climate change has already wrought in Britain, and muses about what it may mean for our native and visiting species in the future. He makes one continually aware of ways in which things are changing, and how something which alters somewhere else in the world can have such a serious knock-on effect in Britain. Everything is connected, and the ruin of one thing could bring about the ruin of all. Throughout, Rutt quotes the results of surveys, as well as a wealth of other naturalists, and even novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Each chapter here focuses on a single species, from the little owl to the natterjack toad. He notices the species around him changing, along with their abundance. Throughout, there are stark warnings, and mixed feelings. On the walks which he takes around the Bedfordshire countryside, he comments: 'It was the first cuckoo I had seen in two years. The first yellow wagtail in three, corn bunting in four... And this feeling is incredibly complicated for me. I'm excited, as birds always make me; I'm delighted to be seeing these species when I had begun to wonder if I would ever see them again. But here is the kicker: it's one pair of yellow wagtails, one individual cuckoo, a few pairs of corn bunting... The species might be here but their numbers are low, the birds being spread even thinner. And it feels as if I'm writing my own archive of loss, walking through a living museum before it's sealed off behind the glass case of history, a display of the future dead and gone.'

Rutt's prose is intelligent and accessible, and it is clear to see that he is a rising star in the world of nature writing. The Eternal Season is a book for every single person who has sought out the nature around them in the last, strange year; who has mused upon the species which they have seen in their local parks; and who are more aware than ever of which species exist, and which thrive, around them. Rutt is acutely aware of what we may stand to lose, and what may have been lost already. A feeling of hope, however, suffuses the whole - and what more do we need after the last year, but hope?

[Natalie (CuriousReader)]

Review originally on Curious Reader!

The Eternal Season is a diary, a historical document, and a plea wrapped into one. The book takes its focus on summer – defined here by a certain degree of light and warmth rather than a calendar point – and what is happening in nature within this period. The joy to be found in the blooming of plant-life or the return of a migrating bird heralding brighter times – “My encounters with birds keep my emotions alive“. There is perhaps as much joy as there is sadness in noticing the landscapes inhabitants – observing beauty, yes, but equally taking note of the absences, what birdsong is missing. Herein comes the dual nature of the book – on the one hand a diary of summer and its rich vibrancy, the naturalists comfort in exploring nature (particularly in troubling times, cough pandemic cough); and on the other the historical documentation of irreversible loss, misguided attempts at controlling ecosystems, worrying signs of things yet to come. Thus we come to the last piece of the book – the plea, to pay closer attention, to remember, to meet our future by confronting our past: “Without the memory of what was once present, without the ‘normal’ as a baseline, each loss becomes internalised to the next generation as the ‘normal’. There is a slow erosion of life this way: what is normal, what we expect, gets progressively less diverse, less interesting.”

Like many naturalists of the 21st century, Stephen Rutt questions the way humans as a species tend to think of nature in pieces, in single organisms rather than seeing the full picture – the complex web of connections in any given ecosystem – “I appreciate once again the web of connections that we live with, that are an integral part of our world. These rhythms cannot be isolated“. This becomes a significant problem when conservation efforts don’t take the interconnectedness of nature into account, making borders of protected lands as if nature cares about our arbitrary rules of conduct. There is criticism due to shortsightedness and Rutt doesn’t hold back in this respect – intrusive species being introduced, domino effects of seemingly minor actions having horrifying end-results, favoring the manufactured over the wild for human convenience.

While there is a melancholic vibration in this book, there is also a hopeful view on future prospects. Successful conservation projects get their due credit, re-wilding gets it time to shine as a beacon of possibility — for nature to regain its rightful place in our landscapes. Ultimately, the plea lands on the need for us as inhabitants of this earth – together with multitudes of other life-forms – to witness; action can only come from proper understanding of what is before we decide on the direction to what can be.

I still have hope but I feel the importance of witnessing more than ever. [..] There is no understanding without first noticing, observing, responding. Bearing witness seems a good, hope-filled first step: it suggests a purpose. A defiance to letting this become normal.

[Ape · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm sure I've said this before, but I really love Stephen Rutt's writing. Which is why I've now read all three of his books and follow the blog. He has an eloquent way of writing about nature that just evokes joy.

I first discovered him during the Wigtown Book Festival in 2020, which was a zoom affair thanks to covid. Then he was promoting his book The Seafarers, and mentioned that he was stuck down south due to lockdowns (he lives in Galloway) and well, what do you know, here is the book that accounts for that year 2020, as well as his own observations and ponderings on how nature is changing as our climate changes - he mentions at that point how we'd had three record breaking hot summers. Well, Mr Rutt, you didn't know about the 40 degrees that were coming in 2022. Yikes! And how some species (this book mostly focuses on birds, moths and butterflies - birds eat bugs, they're all important to one another) are adapting, or we're even finding some moving into the UK whereas before they weren't here, and then of course some specialist and/or migratory birds aren't coping, because they are losing habitat and/or food sources at specific times of the year when they need it. We've all noticed little signs of these changes - something flowering or appearing at the wrong time of year - but perhaps never considered the wider implications of it all.

Given the way it feels like the planet and human kind is heading, this could all feel very hopeless and doom and gloom, but it's not. As well as delighting in nature, he is hopeful. We all have to be. As well as noting these changes, baring witnesses and considering, I think we all have to make little changes. None of this rubbish I've heard people spouting - I'm only one person, it makes no difference until China starts.... bla bla bla.... every little drop can help form a river. People need to change the way they live their lives, culture and society needs to change massively. And whilst that does feel like an impossible feat, getting people on board, seeing changes, here is the hope, actually from the pandemic:

"We must all participate, at every level, in the cultural shift that's needed to make a difference... This is what is really needed - structural change at every level: what is not needed is corporations trying to shift their blame onto us, who can only chose from what we're offered, while they continue to operate as normal...
I was cynical as to whether that could ever happen, whether we were capable of such a large-scale cultural shift in attitude. But the pandemic has proved to be an interesting case study in watching us, all of us, adapt to a new way of living, taking a journey from doubt and sceptisicism to action at the same time." (p 215).

So, he was thinking about writing a book about the changing of summer, was down in the south of England visiting family and then covid and the lockdown arrived and he and his partner were stranded with the in-laws for several months. So this story is also about his lockdown experiences and thoughts, about the daily walks he took in the local area, discovering the wildlife there and reflecting on how summer arrives. Really is worth reading for all.

[Tom Stanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many other people over the past 12 months or so many been experiencing Covid exhaustion, trying as much not to read the daily news of more deaths, seemingly unending lockdowns, insane conspiracy theories, so much so that many have just switched off. However, amid the daily doom and gloom there comes a breath of fresh air, which takes a look at life during these lockdowns but also reminds us that there’s so much more going on than the daily headlines. The Eternal Season, by Stephen Rutt, achieves this and so much more.

In The Eternal Season, Stephen Rutt takes us, not just through his own lockdown experience during the long summer of 2020, but also observes the changes of wildlife in these new seasons of which our behaviour affects with, mostly, a negative influence.

Living the first part of the 2020 lockdown with family in Bedfordshire meant that, like the rest of us there were no long explorations, due to no travel, meaning that those of us who still ventured outdoors were confined to local areas, this not only affected the book Rutt was due to write, due to not being able to travel but also found himself looking at sites on the internet to keep in touch with the natural world while confined within the four walls. However, with the changing seasons and an ever-present climate emergency, he saw that not only migrations were changing but that some species were missing, posing the question as to what the world would be like without birdsong.

Exploring not just the natural world, but also focusing on the changing patterns of nature and the seasons for which the human species has affected over the centuries The Eternal Season highlights the changing patterns of usual summer species, including searching for birds, moths, butterflies and plants, that are among the myriad species that help define British summertime but now are often confused by changing weather patterns and climate change that have, in some cases, meant that birds are migrating to other countries at different times of the year, leaving an unnatural emptiness on the landscape.

The Eternal Season is not just Stephen Rutt’s most compelling work, but probably the most important work of his career.

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel this is a lovely book but it reached me after many other British-books-about-birds-written-by-a-middle-aged-man, and this is probably not the one I will remember the best or the most fondly. From the blurb at the back of the book I expected the book to be a bit more generalist... but it really was all about the birds. I enjoyed how Stephen Rutt links the environmental crisis to the birds and how their behaviour is affected; he really shines when he talks about these migratory birds and their travels. At times the writing felt clumsy: a mix of lecture-style paragraphs (which I found really interesting actually) and personal observations (how many sentences in the same paragraph can you start with "And...", and how many short sentences without verbs can you squeeze in?)
Overall while the book is lovely in itself, I didn't find it different enough from the myriad of bird books that have been published in the UK in the past 18 months. The main differenciator really is the pandemic but although it is the background of Stephen Rutt's book - spending his first lockdown in Bedfordshire, stuck away from his Scottish home -, it was not enough for me to find it particularly different or memorable.

Free ARC received from Netgalley.

[bookventures_of_a_wildflower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for Netgalley and the Publisher for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

First of all I can't believe this book was written by someone so young, because this book radiates wisdom beyond his years. (and i hope this comes off as the compliment i am intending this to be)

I adored this book so much. It was way more emotional than I expected it to be.
The writer's knowledge of the natural world is undoubtedly there and it comes through in the way he talks about the fauna and flora.

Initailly the book was supposed to tell the story of following the warblers throughout Britain, but due to the pandemic the writer was forced to stay somewhat put with his father's family. As a naturalist, he made the most of his time there and wrote a book that gives us a glimpse of the abundance of Britain's fauna and flora. But more importantly gives us insight to all the things that are going wrong. Surrounded by all the beauty and wonder of nature one can get so immersed that he/she becomes blind to the reality of climate change and how not just the seasons but nature has changed the last decade.

I really enjoyed that chapters of this book focuses on different species. All the detailed but not overly indepth introduction of species.

After reading this book, i really want to dive into other books by the author.
5stars

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, Elliott & Thompson have outdone themselves by bringing another fantastic nature title to print. Stephen Rutt’s The Eternal Season is a fascinating exploration of our changing summers here in the UK.

In the summer of 2020, the author had planned to explore the natural world at its peak, basking in the delights that the season brings; birds and butterflies; flowers in full bloom and plant growth at its highest. Unfortunately, 2020 did not turn out as planned, but Rutt still attempted to traverse and encounter as much of the season as he could, even during a lockdown.

Finding himself isolated with his wife at her parents’ house in rural Bedfordshire, daily walks around the area proved his saviour, giving him a chance to see nature up close whilst most people were stuck inside. It also gave him a chance to reflect on previous experiences, and these are recounted throughout the book, making for a highly engaging read. Once he returns to the familiar landscapes of Dumfries, Scotland, he continues his observation of summer’s delights, bringing to light the characteristics of the season in the UK.

As well as the joys of the season, Rutt noticed the subtle changes taking place around the country because of climate change, including birds singing at the wrong time and weather conditions quite inappropriate for the time of year.

The Eternal Season is both a celebration of the season and a warning of the calamities taking place right on our doorsteps. It is a call to wake up, look around us, and do what we can to save our seasons before it is too late.

Thanks so much to the publisher Elliott & Thompson for the review copy of this book!

[Stephen Dunstan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Stephen Rutt's work is among the best in contemporary British nature writing. This book is excellent, thought-provoking stuff and I enjoyed it (if that's the right word given the changing world it describes) a lot.

The only thing I would take issue with is the author's description of moth trapping as 'harmless'. I understand why it is done, as with bird ringing, but it felt a bit self-justifying as in both cases there are impacts on the species involved as well as potential scientific learning.

[Joana · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favourite parts were about the warblers. I enjoyed it and it's beautifully designed but I felt like it lacked a bit of direction - but maybe that's a characteristic of pandemic books.