『Voices From The Crow's Nest』のカバーアート

Voices From The Crow's Nest

Voices From The Crow's Nest

著者： Alexander M Crow
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Here, I share the voiceovers from my letters as a podcast, with occasional extras. I talk about being a part of nature, not apart from it, I talk about ancestral skills, or bushcraft, and I talk about our possible futures as a species living in uncertain, often dangerous times. One day, I might even narrate my fiction. All with hope, joy, and kindness.

alexandermcrow.substack.comAlexander M Crow 社会科学 科学
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  • Summer Break

    Summer Break
    2026/06/30
    As I write this, I only have one further post for The Crow’s Nest queued and ready to go next week. This is deliberate: summer on Substack is the quiet time, the pause between the seasons of interest and readership and, generally, not the right time to share anything you wish to actually be read by more than a few people.This year, I almost made the error of giving myself extra work to do, for potentially little to no return—I deeply considered a week-by-week deconstruction and discussion of the 13th season of the History Channel show, Alone, linking it to my own knowledge and experience, and also cunningly using it to touch on wider salient points. Thankfully, for my summer and, potentially, you, I gave myself a stern talking to and decided against it.I will be popping in on Substack Notes from time to time, and intend to also use the quieter months to read more of your work, including, but absolutely not limited to, that of Susie Mawhinney, Ailsa Ross, Anne Thomas, rebecca hooper, Feasts and Fables, Jonathan Foster, Kate Hill, Laura McVeigh, Rosie Whinray, Sarah Crowder, Stacy Boone. I’ve said it before, but I think considering your Substack subscriptions as a wonderful library is the best thing ever. I try not to stress too much about not being up to date with reading, but sometimes I do worry—then remind myself I can read those words at a point which suits, take a book out of the library, and appreciate every word. Thanks (I thoroughly intend to write more about the voices you might enjoy here but, for now, that small list is a good start).This summer, I shall also be trialling W Social, (Wsocial.eu) which, if you do not know, is a new social media platform advertising itself as: ‘A European social network governed by EU law, data hosted in Europe, and built for real, verified people. Trust your feed.’We’ll see how well this pans out. I’m rather tired and jaded by the whole enshittification of the internet and, although I shall give this a chance, I don’t secretly hold out much hope for it being a good place to be (but I would be utterly delighted to be proven wrong).If you are also thinking of heading to W Social, or are already there, I’m alexandermcrow.wsocial.eu. Do say hi!What else can you expect after this summer interlude? Witness Notes will return in the autumn, precisely when remains to be seen, although I suspect it will be September. I have a lot more material to share, some new thoughts and snippets of my past, and some I’ll be reworking or resharing from previous work. I remain surprised by just how many words I’ve crafted over my life. It is a lot.Likewise, I intend to rework and reshare some other older work, such as my Edges & Entries series, for example. My subscriber numbers and people are quite different from when I shared those pieces.Whether I will reshare my A Fall In Time series, however, I do not yet know, but I doubt it. I have a number of essays already drafted or, in some cases, edited, which I shall also be sending out after summer. Several of them are linked to my currently passing through my 50th year (I’ll turn 50 in May 2027), whether other lists of 49 things, such as the recent scent-based one I shared, or reflective essays looking at who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I would like to go—whether physically, or metaphorically.Much of the work I’ve been doing this year has been offline, words which will be shared in another fashion at some point in the near(ish) future. That is lonely work—writing is by necessity a lonely process, even as we writers observe and notice all around us, secreting and squirrelling things away for digestion and regurgitation at a later date. And all of this has been done against the backdrop of a species and civilisation leaking stuffing from the seams, stitches popping and button eyes hanging by threads. I have made my peace with what is happening—not ‘what is coming’, for it is already here—and all my hope is now centred on things I can hope to influence and achieve, mostly personal and hyperlocal things, but also reaching out to those my words and work might just help.I shall be sharing more essays about hope, about how we can retool it, and about how we can grieve and mourn and move out from under the despair which so many seem to be overwhelmed beneath.In short—you can’t go wrong with being kind. You can’t go wrong with outlasting those who are doing their best to destroy and debase, and you can’t go wrong with finding joy, whether in a single flower or bee, a cooler night after many suffocating ones, or in the uncontrolled, utterly unselfconscious laughter of a child. There is a lot to be grateful for, and I’ll be sharing these things again after summer.Thanks for reading, or listening, as ever. Do please share this with anyone you think might like my work, whether the years of letters here on Substack, or that which is yet to come.And, if you can afford to, you can support my...
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    6 分
  • Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.

    Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.
    2026/06/30
    (After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.The storks have not reared any young. This is not for a lack of trying. Recently, we went for a drive, out along the coast and back, passing several stork nests with small storklings poking out the top. Interestingly, the pair are still mating and still return to guard their nest, especially at lunchtime, when the skies fill with silent gliding competitors and the sound of the pair clattering an aural defence, beaks moving swiftly, wings arranged and bodies bent.The landscape’s coat of flowers has been changed, several times, the principal base colour moving from a rich dark green, through lighter shades, to the greenish-brown she currently wears. I am determined to start to learn all these new friends. I’m doing well with birds, adding several new-to-me species (Iberian grey shrike! Montagu’s harrier! Bonelli’s eagle [today, at lunchtime!] Azure-winged magpie! Black-winged kite!), learning their names (first in French and their Linnaean classification, then English. Sometimes also Portuguese), their habits, why they are here. Next, I should add the flowers.The richness of this area, the sheer variety and abundance, is something I doubt I will ever take for granted. Yes, there are relatively dead areas, as in most places—in this case, the plantations of Eucalyptus but, on the whole, these are more than made up for by the other places.Our walks always invariably show something new. Here, a rich stand of wild apple-mint, there feral nasturtium showing where a garden once was tended. Pausing and looking closely always brings rewards.Insect life flourishes. It a bedrock of a food pyramid stretching high above me, all those tiny tiny thunderflies (Thrips or, hyper-locally from the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, England: Men of Wroot), all those minute spiderlings on silken threads—these are all snatched up and eaten in their millions. Then the eaters are eaten, and so on, and so forth.I could—and want to—write reams about the nature here. And I know I’ve barely scratched the surface. Sometimes, I wish I had more hours in the day, but I have my notes and photographs and memory and, perhaps, one day, I’ll have time to write something to do the subject justice.FinallyIf you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount. If you enjoyed this letter and wish to ...
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    6 分
  • Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.

    Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.
    2026/06/23
    (After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Cercal, Portugal. May 2020.I have now lived in Portugal for nearly two months. I am taking the definition of “lived” as having been in the apartment, not the time spent on the road in January and February, exploring. This is a decent stretch of time to begin to draw some conclusions about a place, albeit with the caveat of lockdown and life being a little different in this day and age. It is, for example, very difficult to find friends or a community without the ability to move around.I originally started this section in long-form, writing paragraphs and explanations about each item on my list. However, as I am wont to do, it turned into a giant essay. Perhaps a bulleted list is more palatable:* Clouds, oh the clouds, the colours, the shapes, the movement.* The wind—an old, close friend, and how I have missed her.* Swiftly changing weather.* Warm sun and lots of it.* The quality of the light, indoors and out. I was spoilt by this, growing up in Orkney and later living in Caithness—but have missed it in Chiang Mai and SE Asia— here is similar to the north of Scotland, there’s just something about the air. Which leads to…* The air quality. It is so fresh, so pure, it is a joy and my lungs are so very thankful. The ocean winds keep it moving.* Unheated (other than by a fireplace) homes, wearing woollen clothes and hats inside, the evenings scented by woodsmoke.* The wealth of insect life, that crucial building block for a healthy ecosystem.* Birds everywhere. Their song a constant soundtrack to the day. The clattering of the storks, screaming swifts and squabbling sparrows just some of them.* Wildflowers in an abundance and variety I do not believe I have ever actually witnessed (the Machair in South Uist comes close for spectacle, but there are more species here). Makes me ashamed of the relative desert some parts of the UK have become.* The smell of the place—whether the eucalyptus plantations, the dry burnt scent of the pine trees, the woody deep smell of the cork oaks, the labdanum oleoresin of the brown-eyed rockrose, or the many different tendrils of flower perfume.* Portuguese blended coffee is surprisingly good. Really, very good.* The wine is an astonishing revelation. So much depth, richness, and flavour.* The wine labels are just as delicious, beautiful artwork often featuring local nature.* The unexpected joy at watching a roof being taken down and a new one put back up, using techniques I doubt have changed in a long, long time (chainsaw ...
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    7 分
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