Shoots become branches - become trees - become forests

New directions for 2025

Friends,

I’ve been taking regular walks through Yeld Wood, over Hergest Ridge and down through the arboretum recently as dusk descends. When the big storm came a few weeks ago and blew down many of the trees in the wood I was nervous about what I’d find in the arboretum, which is home to many strange and magnificent trees. Happily there was little damage, the huge and magnificent sequoias that must have taken the brunt of the winds had lost barely a twig. Meanwhile, in this the dead of winter, the lawns are pushing up thousands of daffodils. Time of endings, time of beginnings. I’ve been taking a few timber specimens from the debris in the wood and testing them with my whittling knife, which I purchased on an impulse just after the storm. As most of the wood I collected was centuries old oak this has been a task far beyond my skills. The wood, which I left to dry out next to our wood-burner has cracked, my knife has blunted and my plan to become a world famous whittler is now sadly in tatters. And so I return to the day job, slightly chastened, but strangely energised.

The past year has been an adventure. 12 months ago I wasn’t at all sure that I could maintain a writing schedule to produce weekly essays for this space. I began Into the Deep Woods on a wing and a prayer hoping I’d find my way over time, or, much like my whitling, quietly slide away from it at the right moment. At the same time I decided to become a professional painter, with absolutely no experience whatsoever, having spent years mainly building websites, and having nothing but a faint memory of my misspent time at art school. I hired a space, spent two months frantically painting, learned how to frame (and how not to), stuffed all the work into the back of my battered Audi and managed to sit trembling in the gallery for 10 days watching people cast their eyes over my work.

Well, it seems to have worked. I kept to the writing schedule, people read the essays, subscribed in numbers I could never have imagined, and I was instantly accepted as an exhibiting artist.

So, thank you - thank you to those of you who have supported my wild venture so far. Today is the first anniversary of paid membership to this space. What follows is a summary of my (only slightly less crazy) plans for the coming year, a year when the focus will sharpen and new adventures will be undertaken.

The stories I intend to publish here this year will have an expanded focus. I’ve received many lovely emails from readers who live far from here and want to read more about the Celtic lands. My main subject so far has been the Welsh border area where I live, specifically the section of the border around my home in Kington. There will be more writing and images from this place, but I’ll also be shouldering my back pack and travelling further afield. I’ll be making more visits to the national parks of Wales, parts of Cornwall and Scotland, and will also travel to parts of Ireland, a country which, strangely, I’ve never been to. Eryri National Park (I love the new Welsh name - meaning Eagle), the Pembrokeshire islands, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, West Penwith and Bodmin Moor (the wildest parts of Cornwall, Ardnamurchan, Mull and Skye in the far west of Scotland are all places I’ve visited in the past and wanted to write about for a long time. I’m going to be painting those landscapes in the spirit of my hero, Norman Ackroyd, who had many adventures in the far west of these islands. Expect wild, misty and windswept views.

I’ll be adding video footage, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but have never really had the time or resources to complete to a standard which I find acceptable (I don’t want to do anything which isn’t first and foremost - beautiful). I now have an assistant (actually I might be his assistant!). My son Lewis is a budding travel filmmaker and photographer. You’ve already seen some of his images here, those spectacular shots of The Black Mountain which I published recently in my story Quiet Illuminations. He’ll be trekking the hills with me (dragging me up them most probably as he’s twice as fit as I am), creating footage of the most spectacular places. I’ve put a short sample below (you’ll need to click through to Substack to view it). I’ll be publishing travelogues over the year which will include long-form written pieces, similar to the series I did on grey seals last Autumn, and including photography and video. We’ve already started this, having spent many freezing hours in the Cambrian Mountains over the past month. We’ll “launch” officially at the end of the month with a trip to one of the last remaining Celtic rainforests in Wales, which are near to a place I wrote about a little while ago for National Geographic (please note that I had nothing to do with the terrible title!). It’s a land of twisted oaks, rock and water, one of the least inhabited places in Europe.

Additionally I’ll be writing (and vlogging) about ways to connect more deeply with landscapes, tutorials of sorts where you’ll get the opportunity to talk about your own local landscapes via the chat function here on Substack. I haven’t done this yet as I’ve been waiting for the community to grow enough for it to be useful to you, and sustainable.

As always, I’ll be producing new work about animals. There will be longform pieces about owls (coming next week), deer, ravens, herons, gannets, sea eagles, and dolphins, to name a few.

Those are my plans for this space in 2025. Many of you kindly became paid subscribers at the beginning of last year. Into the Deep Woods is now knocking on the door of bestseller status (the little tick in my profile appeared recently for a few days). There are so many wonderful worlds on Substack and some of you no doubt will want to visit other lands, but thank you for your support. If you’d like to continue here, even better!

Music by Bishara Haroni

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In other news:

Books

My book Two Lights will be published in paperback this summer. I’ve been working with the team at September on a new cover design. Here it is - a first peek. We’ve worked with one of my better paintings from last year, which features two curlews. It’s a departure from the hardback design (it’s in technicolour!) and I think I prefer it.

It’s been a strange time since the publication of the hardback of Two Lights. The book was my first trade publication and a nerve wracking event in my life which left me with a two year writing hangover. I’ll be honest I had no idea what to do next and dithered for a long period about writing another. When a book goes out into the world it almost literally disappears for the writer, not at all like a digital publication which can be responded to instantly and feels much more communal. Digital publishing is a form of conversation, where trade publishing is like broadcasting, your audience is invisible.

In the end I concentrated on the work here, but I’m now keen to begin another book and have decided to quietly start the process. The project has the working title of Wilderness of Air and Water, a theme I’ve become a little obsessed with. In short it will be a book about rain, a big subject. I’ve started with a long list of research topics - storm seasons, bomb cyclones, El Niño and La Niña, oases, draughts, rainforests, urban wet islands, cloud formation, dry rivers and flood myths, to name a few. That should keep my brain whirring for quite some time!

I hope to include some travel writing and I’m already spending far too much time dreaming of faraway wetlands, river deltas, rainforests and strange rivers which only flow once each century. Rain, of course, is a big part of my life here in the wet hills of Wales, and things are getting wetter. Patterns of rainfall are changing rapidly over the entire planet. It’s a topic which feels important to me at this time of floods, mega storms and droughts. This is a long term project, I expect it to take me several years to complete. I’ll keep you up to date with the process and will include some pieces of writing from the project here.

Paintings

I’m going to be showing in more galleries this year. I have a forthcoming exhibition at Aldeburgh Gallery in Suffolk at the end of February in support of the World Land Trust. The east coast! I was four years old the last time I went there and I remember nothing at all about it. I’ve heard there are no hills. What is that like? The exhibition will feature much of my recent work: small pieces, large pieces, framed and unframed. I’ll be staying in the town over the duration and exploring the surrounding wetlands at a time when the spring and winter migrations intersect. If you live “east side” you’re very welcome to visit. I’ll provide more details here soon.

My main work will be on an exhibition which featuring a sound installation as well as some very big new paintings (diptychs and triptychs), concentrating on the theme of sacred waters and pilgrimage. This is still in proposal stage and I need to do grown up things like funding applications, but there’s already a lot of interest and I’m sure it will happen. I’m not going for a white cube space this time, instead the location will be an ancient church or cathedral, a place with old stonework and high windows, a perfect setting for my method of flowing tones and textures, and my sense of the sacred in nature.

Workshops

I’m tentative about this as my space in Rhayader is just so far away from so many people, but I’ll soon be announcing a workshop to be held in Spring. These will focus on connecting to the wild via creative practice. We will be visiting a very special wooded place next to the river Wye, foraging for inspiration and taking sketches and notes back to the studio where I’ll give demonstrations of my practice with ink and salt, a process which is about as close to flow experience as it gets. From this attendees will be invited to create new written or visual work. There’ll only be space for 8 people in my tiny, ancient and very beautiful studio so please let me know if you’re interested. You can email me at james@nightriverwood.com. Booking will be available via my website in a few weeks. I’m also trying to work out a way to do this online. As mentioned above, I want all projects to be beautiful, so I need to experiment with format and content first.

Busy, busy, busy! In fact re-reading the above has now sent me into a trembling fit!

Here’s to an active 2025 (knees permitting). I hope your own projects and adventures fill you with wonder.

J