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Where's your natural haven?
Do you have a special place? A natural wonder? One where a meaningful event took place? Simon Barnes, one of Britain's best nature writers, shares his 'Sacred Combe' - his most special place - and what it means to him.
We also have five copies of his new book The Sacred Combe to give away to those who post on the thread.
What's your Sacred Combe?
What's yours? Because we've all got one. A secret, special place, one packed with meaning, easy to love but hard to share, except perhaps with our nearest.
It's wild, enclosed and full of life. The birds seem more trusting, the colours seem deeper, and it's full of plants you don't find any old where. It's homely and exotic at the same time. Sometimes it's a place of the imagination, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes from a childhood memory, or from a single happy day in a delicious doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that you daren't go back to, for fear that it has changed. Or you have.
For me the most important of all such places is uncompromisingly real. I realised that it was going to be forever special, in a deeply personal way, the first night I was there and awoke in the middle of the night to find that someone was eating my hut.
I looked out into the dark to see half-a-dozen still darker shapes, moving on vast bedroom-slippered feet and feeding on generous trunkfulls of thatch from my roof. I awoke again the following morning to realise that this wasn't a dream at all, for the ground outside was covered in fallen grass and littered with the vast damp loaves of elephant. Since that night I have pursued a double fascination, a double-enchantment. The first is with the Laungwa Valley in Zambia, to which I have returned many times and seen the place in all its moods and its seasons. The second is with the idea of the Sacred Combe: the secret places of the soul, humanity's heartland.
Sometimes it's a place of the imagination, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes from a childhood memory, or from a single happy day in a delicious doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that you daren't go back to, for fear that it has changed.
I write these words from another such place: from my writing-hut that overlooks our scant few acres of Norfolk marsh, which we manage for wildlife. Since that last full-stop I have – no shred of exaggeration – turned my head to watch a marsh harrier sweeping across the vast sky: a fabulous bid of prey that was once down to a single breeding pair in this country. Yesterday a barn owl stopped 15 yards from my desk to see if the fence-post worked as a hunting-perch.
In short, it's a great tribute to my strength of character that I ever get anything written.
So I ask again: what's yours?
Obviously you're entitled to more than one: you can make your own rules and then break them at will. But a good part of the point is that a Sacred Combe puts you in touch with the wild world: with the world beyond humanity. It's only in such places that we are fully human, for the wild world completes us.
A park where you feed the ducks; a seldom-visited cove you go to on holiday; the place where you always stop on a favourite walk – sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits - or a place where the blackbirds sing in April or the place where you once saw a hedgehog. All these places count and so do many more. They are all deeply personal, and they are all filled with the richness of non-human life. And that's a Sacred Combe for you.
So, what is yours?
Simon's new book The Sacred Combe: A Search for Humanity's Heartland is published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon.
By Simon Barnes
Twitter: @simonbarneswild
Cold old night like this, I'm with you there Galen! (Well, not exactly with you 
)
The ruins at Reculver. I love their majesty and drama. I had my fourth date there with my OH. We went for a picnic on a searing hot September afternoon and I realised I was falling in love with him and thought 'Oh help, I am in trouble here,' but he was mad enough to marry me 
That's a good one Anniebach. My other choice would be a particular place on the north west coast of Scotland but I'm not going to name it 
Maranta it's just so beautiful and secluded isn't it - I mean the bay not my sofa
Rivendell - well I'm sure it would be if it really existed
My bed or settee, with teddy bear cuddle blankets and my vibrating pad.
But, I have just booked a week away in Morecambe for March and it is in an apartment, basement rooms with a bed in the living room. So if it is cold, I can put the fire on and snuggle up in bed watching tele, just me and my doggie. I am really looking forward to it, it's the first time in this apartment, hope many more to come.
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