As I sat reflecting upon the now waning summer, I reflected upon how it didn’t seem anything like those I recalled in my former life. It was as if didn’t even happen. Even the dreary CoVid-19 lockdown summer of 2020 seemed better, more real, by comparison. Even though we were all confined as to where we could go and what we could do, at least we were all “in it together,” as opposed to this present “Thunderdome” summer where it seems that it’s every man for himself and bugger the rest. At least that’s the way it is here in the dis-United States.
However for some – well, perhaps all aside from humans, that is – the summer of 2020 was indeed a summer worth remembering, for in the withdrawal of humans from active life in the world, the rest of the planet’s creatures once again had a chance to live their lives in a way they haven’t been able to do for centuries.
In his recently published Goshawk Summer; A New Forest Season Unlike Any Other, wildlife cameraman James Aldred, author of the previously published The Man Who Climbs Trees, recounts the 2020 season he spent filming a family of Goshawks at tree-top level in Britain’s New Forest, capturing not only what these remarkable birds do over a nesting season, but more significantly recording them living their lives in a year of largely human-free freedom unknown to them or their ancestors for dozens if not hundreds of generations.
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