Anyone who has been familiar with Alys Fowler for any length of time knows her most as a gardener. She was a presenter on Gardener’s World, and had her own mini-series called The Edible Garden in which she used a combination of polyculture and foraging to grow and find most of the fruit and vegetables she and her husband ate for a year. It was a wonderfully inspiring journey and shared not only her gardening know-how, but her resourcefulness in finding gardening supplies and food from what’s around her, finding neighbours and allotment growers who would share or trade with her, and preservation experts who showed her how to preserve some of the vegetables she grew for use in the winter months. It’s a lovely look at just how much is possible with even a modest patch of earth and some know-how.
This book, however, is actually not about gardening. It’s a memoir she wrote about the year she both took up paddling in canals around her home in Birmingham and came out as “gay, or maybe bisexual.” She was married to a man at the time, and so her need to explore this part of herself came at the great cost of her marriage, her home and a lot of pain. I liked how she explored her own emotional landscape as she paddled through a new physical one. How her own unsettled feelings were echoed in the abandoned urban landscape she was experiencing.
Her decision to finally be honest about this part of herself also left her with a lot of guilt. Not only about the pain she had caused both her husband and their dog (who didn’t cope very well with the separation), but because her husband was chronically ill. He had cystic fibrosis, so in addition to being a wife, Fowler was also his caregiver, taking on many of the household tasks and errands when he was unwell and accompanying him to the hospital during his many times there. She liked being a caregiver, and she liked being married. But she needed to be herself and to explore the part of her that had been unacknowledged up until this point. I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to do so knowing what it would cost her husband, and the guilt she would have to shoulder. (Not that I’m unsympathetic towards her husband – I know what it is to be chronically ill, and how hard it is to rely on someone. But also how vital the caregivers in our lives are, and how completely our world crashes down around us if we lose that help we have relied on.)
I don’t know what I expected going into this book. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same sort of cosy experience that The Edible Garden is (my kid and I like to watch it at bedtime because it’s perfect for cuddling up and thinking about how lovely the garden will be when we have planted lots of our own vegetables and flowers in it!). But I don’t think I fully realized how much of her struggle she would share. We see her life come apart, we see her come apart, and we see her letting go of the things that had very much defined her up to this point in her life. Even her beloved garden is left to take care of itself, because all she needs is to be moving. Not necessarily going anywhere in particular, just not standing still. I think this is something most of us can related to – the feeling that accompanies difficult and painful change, the one that has us not wanting to stand still lest the full weight of what we are facing lands on us all at once and crushes us.
And yet, the very urge that propels her away from home, down into the murky waterways of a largely abandoned landscape also brings her full circle to learning a lot more about what she needs from her life. And as she paddles, she starts to notice the plants and wildlife that run alongside her, and slowly, slowly, she even starts to venture out into her garden again. It’s a messy journey, but also one that I think is beautiful in its own way. Life is full of pain, heartache, disappointment, guilt and uncertainty. But there is always beauty and new life alongside the decay and ruin, and love when we least expect it. None of us are perfect, but we all deserve the chance to venture inwards and learn who we really are, to look for what we need in our lives and to heal, especially from the wounds we inflict upon ourselves.
I didn’t find this to be the easiest book to read, not only because the subject matter is challenging, but also because it has a tendency to wander. But it does do a wonderful job of really sharing some of the parts of self-exploration that are hardest to face, and showing how complex relationships can be. It shares how it’s possible to deeply love someone but also not be able to stay with them, and how hard that decision can be – on both sides. It’s easy to sympathize with the person who has been left, but it’s also important to understand how difficult it can be to make that choice. And in this book, Alys Fowler shows us exactly what that means, in every excruciating detail. I left the book hoping that she would be able to create a new life for herself, one in which she could be who she is, love who she loves, and be able to stand still in a sunbeam in her garden and feel the warmth as she enjoyed the buzzing of bees and chirping of birds exploring the natural world right alongside her once more.
Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham’s canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart.
Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?
Beautifully written, honest and very moving, Hidden Nature is also the story of Alys Fowler’s emotional journey: above all, this book is about losing and finding, exploring familiar places and discovering unknown horizons. – Goodreads
Book Title: Hidden Nature
Author: Alys Fowler
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook/Paperback
Published By: Hodder & Stoughton
Released: July 14, 2017
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, LGBTQ+, Self-discovery, Nature
Pages: 320
Date Read: May 16-17, 2024
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.83/5 (119 ratings)