Two Lights: Walking Through Landscapes of Loss and Life

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A meditative and hopeful account of walking through the wild, shifting landscapes of Wales, at all hours of the day and night, and often through times of personal darkness, in search of connection with the earth and its creatures. Roberts’ reflections on the healing power of watching nature change are sensitively expressed, with beautiful, often stark illustrations.’ The Tablet

Roberts walks the bare hills and valleys of Wales, recalling “the forest of my imagination … hiding beneath my feet, in these hills, waiting to regrow.” The trees were cleared thousands of years ago, the first people of Britain burning gaps in the forest to make way for their fields. Now: Deeply personal yet always outward looking, James Roberts delights in the world he discovers about him. Yet he also trembles, because he understands like winter light, that world is diminished [...] and diminishing [...] Two Lights reveals why all of us should be writers." In this lyrical and moving book, James Roberts weaves close observation of nature and place intertwined with memoir and science, with a heart-felt analysis of the predicament facing the natural world, the world we are continuing to destroy. He write of a lived experience, past and present, with an eye towards the future. But Roberts is right, we’ve forgotten. Our leaders think of wars and armies, of immigrants and policies, of votes and elections, ignoring what is happening to the world all around them: like officers fighting on the bridge of a sinking ship. If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find UsA book about what it means to be fully alive in a time of endings: personal, planetary. Deeply moving and rich in surprising perspectives on wild places and our relationship to them." Roberts has a deft way of linking wildlife, memoir and research together, like stepping stones leading the reader onwards. It’s as if he’s had a train of thought whilst out walking and follows it to see where it takes him. In the chapter entitled ‘The Lion, The Wolf and The Curlew’, he moves from the wonder of hearing and seeing lions in Africa, to discussing barbary lions skulls discovered in the moat of the Tower of London, to cave lions that once inhabited the British Isles.

His art and illustrations have featured in several galleries and exhibitions, as well as in theatres, magazines and books.Roberts shows us this world through the lens of dawn and dusk, the two lights which mark the beginning and the end of each day. Starting at dawn, we follow this light, travelling through Russia, Mongolia, Indonesia, the Alps, flying with crested auklets, puffins, golden eagles, Arctic terns and stilts, until we arrive at his home in Wales, where ‘…the last stars are fading out of an indigo sky. On the horizon is a band of burnt orange graduating to turquoise. Strand of cloud hang like tail feathers.’ Nearer to home, he describes star-gazing on the Begwns above Hay, and links it with the swans on the pond up there. He also talked about the swifts travelling from Wales down to Africa on their annual migration, and years ago he travelled a similar route through the Sahara and into the Congo, and further south. Later, when we were chatting, Melanie of the Poetry Bookshop said how pleased she was that he'd mentioned the swifts, because a previous owner of the poetry bookshop had written poems about swifts. There is something about the twilight that allows the past to slip into view more clearly, the way that this day has slipped over the horizon with its tail still visible.

Dawn moves at about 1000 miles an hour across the land at the equator and slows the closer you get to the poles. Knowing when the light would fade and when it would return the following day was hugely important to people. I have a thing for sunsets. If the sky looks good then I head out to a favourite spot to watch the sun disappear over the horizon. I find it a magical time. James' debut memoir Two Lights: Walking through Landscapes of Loss and Life (March 2023) is a beautiful meditation on the years he has spent walking near his home in Wales at dawn and dusk in search of true wilderness, as we hear of the concerning decline in biodiversity around us. He also shares his experience of walking in true wilderness across the world and the importance of truly wild spaces for us all. From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Two Lights is filled with awe-inspiring joy, but also death and decline brought from extermination, fire, flooding and pollution. Roberts is Wales’ own Henry David Thoreau, of whom he writes so eloquently. He is on a mission, and we can follow by reading his work and hopefully, by example.’ BuzzMag

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James Roberts will head out to his garden in the summer at 4 am to watch the stars fade as the sun begins to rise. As the light increases, the birds begin to wake, singing to celebrate the dawn, rooks launching into the air to survive another day. He needs those few minutes in the morning or evening each day for his own internal daily reset. He’s also right that lecturing doesn’t work. Perhaps the oblique, feather-light, razor-sharp insight of an artist and poet may do better. This is a book of quiet beauty, something to be savoured slowly, without rush. Maybe to be read at dawn, or at dusk. I loved it. You might think that with global warming, deforestation, overfishing, soil erosion, draining of wetlands, damming of rivers, pesticides, pollution, growth of cities, nights so bright with streetlights that citydwellers never see more than half-a-dozen stars, nights without nightingales, corn without cornflowers, meadows without meadowsweet, hedges without “immemorial elms”, roadsides without primroses, garden Buddleia bushes without butterflies, the extinction of species… that we would need no reminding that we have lost something.

This could be my imagination at work, projecting them on to this emptied place where centuries ago wolves hunted and, before them, lions. We are all, at the last, just fading shapes in the memories of others.’ Not just in the title of this chapter, but appearing and calling their unique, sorrowful call throughout the book, is the curlew, which becomes, to him, a symbol of the extinction crisis. James spent many years working in the design industry. He has worked as a technologist, editor, art-director, graphic designer, content writer and illustrator. He was publisher of Zoomorphic Magazine for several years. He also teaches workshops for other creatives, scientists and activists.

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The book is full of his keen observations of the world around him, whether he is searching for curlews at dusk, walking across a field as the building storm turns the sky to hammered lead. He sits in the boughs of an old yew watching the sun melt the frost away or seeing a raven and a peregrine spar. Aside from these observations, are his thoughts on his family and the challenges that he has to deal with recently and he thoughts on the bleak outlook for the wildlife of his local patch.