A Celebration of Scent: 49 Favourites

A Celebration of Scent: 49 Favourites

A while ago, back in March, Sarah Crowder [https://substack.com/profile/3383002-sarah-crowder] shared a list she’d crafted about 41 of her favourite smells. (She is certainly charmed, having a birthday on the 21st of March. There’s power in that.) At the time, I thought this a great idea, and set myself the challenge of doing likewise once I reached the semi-mystical age of 49 years. Since, I have been keeping notes on this and, a few weeks after my birthday, it’s time to share my own list, in no particular order. (Note: I’d originally intended to do similarly to Sarah, a note listing things but then, as I kept my list of ideas, it turned into an obvious post.) I try not to include anything too universally admired (it’s hard, though, and I’ve sneakily snuck some of those smells into others below. There’s no petrichor, though, which is a shame). Before we begin with my own, here’s Sarah’s excellent list, with a frankly fantastic photograph (I’ve illustrated my own piece with photos of my own, linking to some of the scents I’ve shared): Finally, before we begin, I’m not including any scents deemed too adult by nature, as I know some of you might not appreciate that (also, my Mum reads this, hi Mum!). I’ll let your own imaginations fill in the blanks on these. Blimey! Your head went there?! (Shut up, Alex—Ed.) (This post might be cut short in some email clients, so do make sure you read it all!) The List. 49(+) Favourite Scents. 1. The scent of webbing straps left out in the forest. For example, those of my hammock and that of my wildlife trail camera. They absorb something of the spirit of a tree, something not quite bark, nor moss, but beyond both. 2. Similar to this, the scent of my principal tarp, the one I used for my extended stays out in the woods. It is rich in campfire notes, with hints of the forest itself, rain, sun, wind, cold and heat, falling leaves and fragments of lichen. Made from a sort of poly cotton, over the years the material has become something else, grown into a Thing, with a scent of its own. 3. The particular smell of knapping and abrading a flint. I think I prefer this to the scent derived from striking a light from a flint, but that is also delicious. 4. The dark rocks of the cove by Little Burrageo [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/selkie-song] in Deerness, when there has been sunshine for three days and little wind. A rare phenomenon in Orkney, this warms them and traps and distills the sea and land and, particularly, the coast into one distinctive smell. It has top notes of crumbling sandstone, iodine, and salt, with a rich body derived from the more volcanic, harder rock. Other places on the same coast don’t quite capture the same depth of scent and, when I lived near there, if they did have the scent, it would have been lost beneath tonnes of guano from the tens of thousands of seabirds who used to nest there. Last time I visited in spring, those cliffs lay comparatively silent, many of the birds dead or gone northward. 5. Evening, night-blooming jasmine, and frangipani, after a hot tropical day. Before the night mosquitoes appear in force, but as the day ones are going to bed. 6. Old books, obviously but, to make it a little more personal, I’ll be a touch more specific—the scent of a particular journal, once a chunky ledger for a company back in the 1800s, a company who only filled in five pages of 2000+, before abandoning that ledger. Now, it has been passed to me and, every time I open her, the scent is transporting. And, if I’m honest, a little off-putting. I want to use her pages, fill her in some way, but I’ve yet to quite learn how and I find the ancient smell akin to an elderly mystic sitting silently and peacefully, yet somehow also judging me. 7. Tulsi I’ve grown, harvested, and dried myself. Particularly Ethiopian tulsi. It is a bit tutti-frutti, a bit sharp, a bit wonderful, all its own thing. 8. Otter spraint, or poop. Yeah, I know, but to smell this as you walk a river or a coast is one of those times where the nose can sometimes confirm an animal before the other senses, and I love that. (See also—the scent of deer in a thick wood, but not the scent of wild boar, despite being an awesome thing, knowing they’re hiding up in that thicket, on that ridge, just from smell alone—it ain’t as nice as deer—and neither can touch the otter poop for sheer sort-of-jasmine nose joy.) 9. Givenchy Very Irresistible For Men. My go-to scent back in the mid 2000s through to the early 2010s, criminally deleted by the company, it fit me and my skin so well. Somewhat chocolatey, although the middle notes are actually coffee and sesame. Top notes included mint and grapefruit, with a base of Virginia cedar and hazelnut. Absolutely my favourite manufactured perfume for men, hands-down, and I mourn its loss still. (Honourable mention over the years for Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme, and [vintage] Burberry Men [and, to a lesser extent, vintage Burberry Weekend for summer.]) These days, I wear nothing, have no added scent—I even use a simple, scentless, solid deodorant. I’m not even comfortable with too strong an odour from washing liquid—probably all due to AuDHD. If I find a scent I love, that’s different (oh! for the day my unanswered pleas to Givenchy are met!), but I ain’t spraying myself in something mediocre. 10. One particular green, Thai balm, used for all sorts of things, including mosquito bites, for example. I have no idea what it is called, or what is in it, but it came from Pun Pun [https://punpunthailand.org] and I love it. 11. That smell which emanates from a really good fish and chip shop when the door is opened. Part fish, part oil, part salt and vinegar, all addictive. 12. Hedgerows in spring bloom. This is a cheat, as it means I can include things like elderflower, hawthorn, wild roses, damp ditches after a night rain, warming leaves of stray raspberry canes and sharp tangles of blackberries, honeysuckle, linden, and so many others. 13. Oakwood burning on a campfire, beechwood burning in a stove. Ash on and in both. Birchwood forever. 14. Great draughts of humid, nighttime, August air, circa 1987, coming in from the once vast swamp of the Humberhead Levels, as the pea viners light up the fields and cast the scent far and wide. 15. The leather sheath on my favourite knife (an Iisakki Järvenpää puukko), worn and full of my own oils and hints of all the times it has been out in the woods, coast, mountains, and moors, perhaps a memory of blood from slips and carelessness when I was younger. (See also: the leather belt I have worn for years, and old, well-maintained vegetable-tanned leather in general.) 16. Whatever plastic Lego is made of, when accumulated in a box, played with for years, perhaps chewed a little, full of promise and hope. 17. Turpentine, including the turpentine scent of fatwood when harvested. Breaking a pine branch or chopping at the base of a dead pine and smelling this is like smelling the fire it will kindle in a different form. 18. Wild chives, brushed past on a forest trail. And also the cool mountain wind bringing down the overpowering scent of wild bear garlic every spring, rushing through the village and reminding me it’s time to make pesto [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/bear-garlic-pesto]. 19. Similarly, wild strawberry. Their scent is a vast part of the taste and, oh my, it is heavenly. (I also love gathering their leaves for tisane.) I could wax lyrical about sun-warmed strawberries, or a perfect passion fruit, or those purple fleshed dragon fruit, or several other types of fruit, how the scent of those freshly picked is utterly different from the pallid and dry examples you find in shops, how we should all try and taste these things properly, at least once in our lives, and how such a massive part of that tasting comes through the nose. 20. Sphagnum moss, when plucked for cleaning purposes, whether for my billy can (with wood ash and sand) or my derriere (without wood ash or sand). 21. Balloons, when stretched out and then as I blow into them and inhale again. A scent that goes hand-in-hand with an excited child. 22. My fedora, dating to 1930s Germany, with the later addition of an added, internal soft leather headband after I cut off all my hair back in 2002ish, to compensate for its lack and make it fit again. It is rich in memory of felt, wearing and weather, and carries a dignified weight which befits being nearly 100 years old and as good as it ever was (£10 from Oxfam, Broomhill, Sheffield, 2001). I wear it a lot in winter here, mostly at my computer on dark days, so as to stop the glare of the lights above annoying me too much and to keep my head warm. I always wonder at its journey. And yes, of course Indy was an inspiration, I was reading Archaeology and Prehistory at the time, after all. 23. Turning and using compost when time has done its magic. A richness and reward, a promise of life to come. 24. Opening a new, quality board-game box, pushing out cardboard counters and pieces, handling wooden tokens and thinking of how many times they’ll be moved around, and all the little stories they’ll build, stories which will rarely be remembered. The scent of this is intrinsically tied in with the future. 25. Likewise, certain acrylic paints—also tied to a memory of the future, reminding me of when I used to paint Games Workshop models, and wonder what the future would bring for them, the battles and campaigns to be fought (ultimately, it brought me selling almost all of them, years later, now ‘vintage’, the money funding months of adventure out in the woods. A fair trade.). Acrylic paint smell will always transport me back to my teenage years in the 1990s. 26. The smell of the art hut used by Stromness Primary school, but actually a part of the old Stromness Academy, mid 1980s, all warm wooden floors and walls, pencil shavings, paints, paint-water (which I once drank for a dare and did not die), inks, papers, canvas, and rubbers perhaps made of real vulcanised rubber, those tiny used tendrils of once-tree-blood now strewn in the cracks of the hut, lost, trying to transfuse themselves back into a similar body. This scent underpins all art I create. (I searched online for an image of the art hut, but drew a blank. Any Orcadian readers who might have an image, or know where to find one, do please let me know!) 27. Brinkie’s Brae, above Stromness, Maytime, when the heather and gorse and peat are warmed by the rapidly lengthening days and the sea breeze is fresh and glorious. Even back then in my childhood, the knowledge that the sleeping uranium deposits beneath the West Mainland were still there, still a threat if extracted, a part of the whole, adding a frisson (fission?) of danger to a delicious scent. (Orkney has a particular series of scents, something you will no doubt know if you’ve ever lived there, or visited. Go up one hill and it smells a certain way, that beach over there different to that other one. Thousands of scents, each a placemarker, a point in space and time found only through the nose.) 28. Smoke machine smoke. Especially when overused and in a small, badly ventilated club, mid to late 90s. Perhaps early 2000s. The scent overpowering that of sweating dancers, of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and dubious deodorant. 29. The sweetness of Golden Virginia, the slightly more raw and rugged Old Holborn, most pipe tobacco, but never anything pre-rolled, unless it is a very good cigar, or that curious box of perhaps Turkish cigarettes I was once gifted decades ago. It’s been a long item since I smoked, and I find I miss the ritual of rolling a cigarette or packing a pipe more than the act of actually smoking it. 30. The A4961 road, on certain mornings between 1993 and 1995, where it passes through the Highland Park distillery. Similarly, when there was a south-east wind blowing from the Old Pulteney distillery in Wick. 31. My Matterhorn leather combat boots. Worn for archaeological survey/fieldwalking work in the Sierra of central Spain, 2003, in August. During the day, it was fiercely heatwave hot, and everything was scented by the wild mountain thyme. Those boots still retain a hint of this scent today, over twenty years later. 32. The fynbos, scent blown to the nostrils by the Cape Doctor. As I stepped out of the aircon bubble of Cape Town airport, that smell was something utterly alien to me, my first new floristic kingdom outside the one I had grown entwined within. It smelled of adventure, of self-discovery, of a different path. 33. A certain batch of beef jerky for a Scottish bushcraft adventure I made back in 2008. I’ve never quite got it right since, but it was utterly delicious and the scent was a big part of that. Maybe a bit Worcestershire sauce, a touch of dark soy, some chilli flakes, salt, and good lean beef, but very much its own thing, blended. 34. The warm, sleepy smell of Ailsa when I wake her first thing in the morning. An olfactory hug, every time, reminding me of the journey to that point. Every time. 35. Salt and Vinegar sticks, circa 1990. Close second: pickled onion flavour Monster Munch, similar temporal zone. Likewise, an old fashioned sweet shop. Tendrils of Black Jacks mixed with Rhubarb and Custard, hints of gobstoppers and sickly-sweet flumps, something chocolate, something lime, something which makes the mouth water and the nose crave more, as though the air is so laden with sugared treats that we get a different hit with each inhalation. Also, Heinz tomato soup with my Mum’s homemade bread from when she had the first bread machine, a rare treat. 36. The wildness of my then lover, who we’ll call Daisy, her scent a marvel I cannot even begin to describe; a long, long time ago, when I was learning much about the world. She captured something I felt a part of, something I felt apart from, something I wanted to explore, deeply, and a part of me I was afraid of, all perfectly distilled into how she smelled. For teenage me it/she was a revelation. 37. Argan oil, sun warmed on skin. Sometimes also coconut oil, but that always makes me long for the gorse bloom. Occasionally also shea butter, depending on who has it on them. And certainly the oils I made for Aurélie, which she applies before bed, infused with calendula, a touch of lavender, plantain, yarrow, St. John’s Wort, all infused in olive oil and blended just-so. (Also, I love the go-to balm I make, too, very similar ingredients, with added beeswax and sometimes usnea, itself a scent I adore.) 38. A particular bouquet of wildflowers I went out along the field edges to carefully select, before heading to Stenness Primary school one spring morning, destined for the desk of the girl I really fancied at the time, a secret smuggled declaration. I can still smell it now, forty years later. Weird, huh? 39. My current tisane of choice: a few leaves of birch, some mugwort, a pinch of tulsi, a few straggles of yarrow, lemon balm, and rosemary. It was even better when I had Jiaogulan, but I’ve run out now. Sad face. It has one smell once mixed and another once the water has added, and I view both as sides of a coin. Ritual, and ritualistic practices, often come with deep, intrinsic scents embedded within them. (Although I often take it far too much for granted, cuppa-addict that I am, the scent of a strong black tea is another good example. Coffee, too, obvs.; less obviously, Thai tea, no extra sugar.) 40. How Aurélie would smell when she came home after a day divemaster training. Salty and warm, carrying hints of another world into my nostrils, a world I’m highly unlikely to ever explore myself. 41. How I smell after I am disciplined enough to use the little gym I built in the workshop downstairs. A bit dusty, hands somewhat metallic, with a hint of rubber and boxing glove, overlain with fresh sweat and, sometimes, chocolate protein powder. It is the scent of a form of progress and achievement. (See also: the smell of printing out a chapter to edit by hand; refilling a fountain pen; cracking open a new journal, etcetera.) 42. Whatever mascara and eyeliner I used back in day, when heading out-out. I cannot for the life of me recall the brand of either, but that combo was powerful magic, a mask and lure both. 43. My own Hoisan sauce. It is just yummy, perfectly Unami-scented, perfect sillage. I should really write down the recipe at some point, it might not be (isn’t) truly authentic, but it is delicious and smells awesome. 44. Bonfire night—again, decades ago—in this case, especially Guy Fawkes night (there’s a strong argument for Samhain and Beltane, too, but those are more adult memories and scents for me). Woodsmoke, gunpowder and sparklers, toffee apples, bonfire toffee, and frying onions. 45. Old, old places of worship and gathering. Whether the small and mouldering CofE churches I remember from Lincolnshire, the grand European cathedrals, Asian temples, stone circles at sunrise, or a small almost-forgotten spring in the forest—these places have a scent which carries power and depth-of-human-(pre)history straight through the nose and into the soul. 46. The sea. Especially the Atlantic breaking onto Europe, crumbling her shores and pulling in mysteries from the deep places. Especially in Scotland. The sea is something I have tried to share my thoughts about before, a lot, and I know I will never even come close. This is a good thing. 47. The first tendril of smoke when you light a fire with sticks. As in, rubbing them together. There is no scent more directly correlated to hope than this and, I think, probably never has been and never will be. 48. Argos bakery in Stromness, Orkney. Especially the precise scent when you ask for one of their legendary custard doughnuts and they reach in to get it. I’ve now been sans gluten for around 15 years, thanks to a high level of intolerance, and it saddens me to think I’ll never get to eat one of those again. Still, I have the memory, and the scent. 49. An old suitcase of treasures, found in a barn or attic, slightly mouldering, scented faintly with mothballs and strongly with time. There is a particular scent to opening a thing or space which has been shut for a long time, as though you are inhaling the past which, in many ways, I guess you are. Once upon a time, my sisters and I found treasure in one of the outbuildings near our house. It was not our treasure, but then we were pirates rather than the Crown, the buildings were not ours, but we played there regardless. There were mice and rats and birds, and who knew what else. One day, we moved a straw and bird dropping covered tarp to find a container—I remember not what it was, precisely, maybe a decayed cardboard box, or an old suitcase [my memory makes it a suitcase, but my memory is no longer the best judge of these matters], or perhaps a wooden crate), with the content spilling out into the straw and poop. There was something bright there in the gloom and, as we looked more closely, we realised it was a stamp. A stamp from somewhere far away and long ago, a moment in two times, linked by journeys—from whoever wrote and sent the letter, to whoever received it, to whoever saved the stamp to us. The smell of that moment, of discovering this little rectangle of another place and time, that scent has stuck with me. Needless to say, we excavated a little further and found more stamps, then a whole album, each page rich with that vannillinesque scent of slowly decaying paper. A wealth of beautiful images made more precious by their precarious position. Old barns sometimes smell like this. As do rooms which have not been aired for a long time, or cellars locked away and forgotten. It is not always a comfortable scent, but it is a true scent of adventure, of mystery, of childhood, and it remains a favourite of mine. And yes, despite the protestations of our parents, we kept those stamps—none of us could stand to see or smell them decay any more. What About You? What about you? Do you have a favourite scent, or a whole list of them? Does something inhaled remind you of a moment—as when you walk through a crowd and someone passes you, wearing a perfume you associate with someone else, long ago, forgotten, but for that reminder? Finally I have left out a veritable catalogue of favourite scents here. I knew finding 49 would not be a problem, but I did not quite anticipate how many others would be left out, unsniffed and unshared. Maybe, if I make it, and the internet is still a thing, I’ll share a further list at some other big birthday year in the future, with new, old scents. Many thanks for reading, I really appreciate that you do. It has been a awhile since I shared something other than my Witness Notes series [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/witness-notes-1?r=o064], but I have plans I’ll discuss in a few weeks, plans which should see more shared here, and elsewhere, along with updates to other work, too. It feels like it is time to do so. As I discussed, here [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/where-we-are-or-where-am-i], the only work I’ll be paywalling in future will be my fiction, once a piece has initially been shared for free. However, there is still an option to subscribe, simply as a way to support my writing and, for those of you who do so, I cannot tell you how grateful I am. I don’t like gatekeeping if I can help it, so sharing things for free and hoping that people still see the value in it seems a good balance to me. If a subscription is not possible, but you wish to support my work, then I have a KoFi link here, where you can pay for a cup of tea (or more, if you wish and can afford to). If you cannot afford a monetary amount, please remember that sharing my work, here and elsewhere, or forwarding an email, liking a piece or, especially, commenting, is also a fantastic way to show support. I try to get to all the comments, but sometimes it takes a wee while to do so. That does not mean I don’t appreciate them, I really do, thank you. Have someone in your life who loves scents too? Send this to them! Finally, thanks again for reading, I hope this list has made you think about how scent and smell is so very important to the majority of us, and how we often ignore it anyway. Get full access to The Crow's Nest at alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995.

(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.) Introduction The 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/i/143668758/globally]. 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/the-third-state-of-the-nest-address] 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. Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995. I am partway up the cliff when I realise my mistake. Not climbing in welly boots, nor climbing without ropes—those are normal—but picking a route which takes me too close to a fulmar nest. Usually, I check this but, on this particular day I did not notice the bird, tucked into a ledge, away from view. I see the bird, the bird sees me and, as is the custom of fulmar, it leans forward to try and vomit a foul-scented mess on me. I lean back. Which is, of course, a mistake. Sticky, oily vomit or not—leaning back from a cliff face is unwise. The rock I was holding starts to come away, comically slow. It, like much of this cliff, was loose—held together on one plane, fractured on another. Like so many of us. Something pulls the wrong way, you come apart. I fall. It is not that far to the rocks below, but it is far enough to make me understand the gravity of the situation as I am weightless, attracted by gravity and thoroughly seen off by a cousin of the albatross family. Damn tube-noses. When I was young, Stenness Primary School had two classrooms—the Big End and the Peedie End. I was in the former, and my teacher at that time was the headmaster, writer, Orcadian scholar and collector of stories, Gregor Lamb. I remember a story he used to tell, one which seems fitting to slip into this piece, here. It took place not far from where I was falling, on the now-uninhabited island of Copinsay. A visitor to the island, perhaps someone connected to the lighthouse, or maybe someone visiting during the war years, when the population of Orkney became swollen like the corpse of a beached whale—I forget which—asked to go along with one of the families who still lived there, as they went to collect eggs. Now, collecting eggs in our modern parlance might sound quaint for many. It is something not too many city-based folk have done, after all and, in their mind, probably involves ducking into a chicken coop and plucking out the eggs neatly arranged there. As someone who has actually collected eggs, I can affirm that, yes, this is often the case but, quite often, it is considerably more work than that. The eggs have been hidden. The chickens do not want you to take them. You slip and end up sitting in chicken poop. You bang your head trying to escape the angry hen. However, in the case in point in this tale, the eggs were considerably more free range than this. Copinsay is gently sloping, rising up from the direction of Mainland Orkney and Deerness—where I lived at that time—to the other side of the island, stark and naked to the whims of the North Sea, sheer cliffs, not unlike the one I was climbing. The tourist, the visitor, whoever they were, watched, as the man tied a rope around the waist of one of his children, then lowered them down, to gather seabird eggs. They would scramble this way and that, filling a basket with the eggs and avoiding the angry parents as best they could. It was a dangerous, messy business, but essential for survival, the eggs feeding the family for a long time, able to be traded for other items, all of which needed to be rowed across from the Mainland. Watching this, mildly horrified at the risks taken with the children, the man asked the father, ‘What happens if the rope breaks?’ To which he received the reply, ‘Well, don’t worry, I’ve plenty more rope.’ Of course, this reply would have been in Orcadian dialect, a rich and beautiful thing, a remnant of a past thankfully being guarded for our future. As I fell, I wonder if that story popped into my head. Perhaps. It seems more likely I used that time to try and direct my downwards descent, successfully, as it turned out, landing on the only patch of grass and sea pink amongst a mass of jagged rock. I still badly twisted my knee, but was able to mostly laugh it off. The walk home was not fun, however, and I seem to recall that was the last time I ever climbed in wellington boots. I have also been wary of fulmar ever since and, ever since, my right knee hurts in wet weather or, increasingly—if I’m honest—dry weather, too. Finally If 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 share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work. I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you. Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does. Get full access to The Crow's Nest at alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Isère, France. July, 2021.

(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.) Introduction The 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/i/143668758/globally]. 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/the-third-state-of-the-nest-address] 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. Isère, France. July, 2021. Moving through a natural woodland is different from passing through any other environment. You cannot rush, you cannot allow yourself to miss the little details. The more time you spend amongst the trees, the more you realise this and the quicker your pace alters: slow, slower, pause, repeat. Essentially, you return to a more natural state, a rhythm as old as our species itself. You listen, you look, these senses you already know well pulling in huge amounts of data. For most people, the vast majority of their information comes from sight and sound, but spend time in the woods and you learn to touch things—that tree bark, that rock or leaf, for example, you learn to inhale in a different way, deliberately sampling the air and all the varied perfumes it brings. You can even learn to taste that same air, or pick a leaf or fruit and chew. Then there are the senses we don’t always realise exist, let alone consciously utilise. Some of these can be a little unnerving when you first start to actively use and acknowledge them—some people call them a sixth sense which, quite frankly, is silly. We have far more than five senses, after all. Learning to listen to that little voice in your head, the one which tells you something is watching you, or that there’s something ahead on the trail, these things take time, but it is time which is well spent indeed. Of course, this isn’t supernatural at all, but simply your brain processing different information and picking up on tiny details you have consciously missed. Perhaps a change in the air brought a tendril of scent? We often fail to use our noses as we can—try it, now, sitting reading this, open your nostrils wide and inhale slowly and deliberately, you may be surprised what you can sample. Similarly, learning to snuffle like a dog at a scent trail is possible too, involving faster inhalation and sampling, your sense of smell actually being worked properly. Both these things can seem like strange magic, but also seek to remind us how civilisation can dull our own bodily functions. The woodland is a complex machine of many parts. It exists on different scales and even across time. I have walked across Scottish hillsides, devoid of any tree cover, but have known from the wide flourishes of native bluebells and anemones that I was walking through the ghost of a wood. If you look closely at the ground around you, you can often see small depressions, pockmarks from where trees were once blown over, tearing the ground and leaving their mark, long after they have rotted into the soil, eaten by large mouths and small. There exists a special light in woods, it filters through seasons and sun and rain, drifting through lifetimes, whether that of the tiny flowers carpeting the forest floor, your own, or that of the grandest oak. Wooded mountain valleys can maintain microclimates of their own, entirely different to that a stone’s throw away. Each area attracting a differing clientele, a question of scale within scales, Matryoshka-style. One side of a wooded valley is entirely different to the other. Different species of trees allow different understoreys, different flora and fauna, all within a tiny area. You can even teach yourself to know what species of trees are present by listening to the wind—different leaves make different sounds, watch, listen, learn: one rustle for oak and another for ash. To learn about the wood is to learn about life itself. It can teach us as much about ourselves as it does about this tree or that, or who that caterpillar becomes, what chewed those holes, why is this leaf patterned like that, which friend left those tracks? To learn about the wood is to be reminded of what matters, to be rejuvenated, to be healed of those myriad invisible wounds we receive within the urban environment. This process can be difficult for some people, taking a step back, revisiting atrophied senses, sometimes feeling enclosed and claustrophobic, primal and imagined fears rearing their head—but the results are worth it. Once, a friend of mine was concerned about my leaving my job to spend time in the woods on my own, worried about the dangerous lone men in the woods, with their knives and axes. I gently pointed out these men are nearly always fictional, that they simply don’t exist and I would be fine out there. With my knives and axe. Alone. It’s not hard to see how these stories and fears appear—if hikers or kayakers had met me at my wildest, with a long beard, woodsmoke-scented, wearing my axe on my belt, a knife at the other side and another around my neck, then I wonder what they would have thought. In the UK, certainly, these things are no longer common, nor always legal. (As a counterpoint of sorts to the above, I remember one long, rambling conversation with my sadly now dead dissertation tutor, the larger-than-life Professor [and Count, I believe] Marek Zvelebil. We were talking about woodlands, and [human] life in woods, and he explained about Finnish settlers to the mid-west US, and how they would often plant trees all around their homestead, close, blocking extensive views, the wide-open prairie deeply unsettling for them, having come from a place where the woods were deep and all-pervasive.) To me, to walk in a woodland, especially one less-managed, less tamed, is to hear the voices of our ancestors, to understand how we are but a blink in time, connected to something vast and essentially, reassuringly, incompressible. They are our ancestral home and to sit beneath the spreading branches of ancient friends is to step back in time, become something we are perhaps meant to be. Finally If 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 share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work. I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you. Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does. Get full access to The Crow's Nest at alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Isère, France. June, 2021.

(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.) Introduction The 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/i/143668758/globally]. 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/the-third-state-of-the-nest-address] 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. Isère, France. June, 2021. Everything is wet, everything is fresh and green, new and spring-like until, almost overnight, summer arrives. And she arrives with the subtlety of someone snatching you off the street, fully-clothed, and throwing you into a sauna. The mountain greening is complete, the summer bleaching coming. The valley in which Grenoble and Echirolles sit holds the heat and maintains the humidity. The pollution builds up here in summer, nowhere near as much as it did in Chiang Mai, but it is noticeable. Mountains are hidden, disappearing behind greying air, the blue leaching from the sky day by day, only to suddenly reappear, cleaned and fresh after a thunderstorm, as though someone has restored the painting. The air is close and full of energy. It is no wonder people leave the city for the coast or the mountains in summer. We shall be doing both. Outside the window the blackcap has started to sing once more, joined by the never-ceasing serin, the great tit, blackbird, sparrow, and collared dove. Sometimes, there are others, such as the black kite I witnessed almost crashing to the ground, mobbed by crows, twirling and dropping to escape. We have been visited by a kestrel, a sparrowhawk, a buzzard and my current favourite—the crested tit, punklike, carrying considerable attitude in a tiny frame. The scent of roses and peonies rises to my floor, my side of the house cooler than the other in the mornings, the air still relatively fresh. I cannot wait for the scent of the mountainside in the morning, or the taste of salt on my lips once more, the wind from the Mediterranean almost ever-present, reminding me of home, whatever that means. Each day, each month, season, and year creates a new tale of its own. There are always similarities with the previous chapters, but as time moves on, so does the story. Those robins nest in a different place, meaning their previous location is now available for the blackbird. That cherry tree is damaged by a late cold snap, encouraged to sleep longer, opening tentative leaves in the middle of June, long after the other two. This means the birds on the feeder are far easier to view. Covid means the shrubs and plants have been allowed to grow longer, wilder, more bushy along the pathways. This gives the birds and other animals more food, more shelter, more room to nest and nurture. Every day, a different story. Every year, different. Now, look at your own location and time, and consider the variables. A vast and incomprehensible web begins to appear, with one strand leading to another, one branch taking it in an entirely different direction. Too often, we forget this. Stories of scale are difficult to comprehend, how one action on another side of the world has a direct effect in your own back garden. We can only control tiny portions of this story, so much is out of our hands—yet it is this very act of accepting we are unable to write the whole which means the tale itself can flourish. Fill the bird feeders. Leave out water on hot days, or everyday. Let a patch of your garden grow wild. Pick up that litter. Choose plastic-free alternatives. There are other actions we can take, each certainly worthwhile but, perhaps most of all, we need to share the differences in our stories with one another—and rejoice in them. We need to show that, by acting individually, we can absolutely change things but, by working together, we can set the world itself on a different, better path. That’s why we tell the tales, for communication is key; communication is telling stories, of course it is, but it is also learning when to be quiet and simply listen. Nature has much to share. Everybody has a starring role in their life. Everybody is the lead character, supported by a wide and varied cast, some family, some friends, the occasional rival or enemy. We all have an opportunity to choose our direction, if we wish to, although it is disingenuous to not mention this is considerably easier for certain groups than others. Our stories are all important. Every moment of every life, how they interact and weave together, how one person can turn the direction of their life and those around them in but a single heartbeat. Too often, it is the voices of despair and misery which are loudest. This is simply human nature; we as a species love a good disaster or opportunity to be glad it is not us suffering. However, as the distances between our cultures and nations shrink, as our ability to travel anywhere on earth within a span of time measurable in hours grows, then it is the natural boundaries which begin to be tested. For the first time in our collective history, we can hear the stories of others if we want to and, crucially and critically, if we do not. This means we can no longer ignore those tales, those lives, as we once could. True, there are those who do not care, those who go out of their way to denounce difference and reject cooperation, and they can shout and rail and scream as much as they like, but it no longer really matters. Change is coming, big change. There is no escaping that, the balance is shifting. Our stories swirl together more and more, threads tangling and pulling in new directions—and do not believe it will definitely end in a dystopian hellscape, there is a chance a protopia beckons. Why not? We, as a species, can dream big. We all need to pay attention, we all need to realise we can make a difference, because all of our stories matter. Let’s keep talking to each other—and let’s keep listening. Finally If 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 share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work. I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change. Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does. Get full access to The Crow's Nest at alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Leicester, England. Autumn, 1998.

(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.) Introduction The 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/i/143668758/globally]. 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 [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/p/the-third-state-of-the-nest-address] 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. Leicester, England. Autumn, 1998. The following paragraphs were a big part of the genesis for my Witness Notes series—the idea of sharing vignettes from my life, whether things originally shared via my earlier letters, years ago, or from former blog posts, my journals, notebooks, or memories. This one, I shared on Substack Notes [https://substack.com/@alexandermcrow/note/c-193496257?r=o064] on Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve), 2025, and it planted the idea of sharing more. I have not shared it as a Witness Note as yet, as I thought it perhaps too long, but I think it is now time to do so. A long time ago, a generation or more (depending on whose definition of generation you take, of course), I found myself waiting for a train from Leicester to Derby. I was with my housemate, and we were, for all intents and purposes, cosplaying Down And Out In The Midlands (of England). During that time, Orwell would have recognised our situation and circumstances and nodded, before returning to scrubbing his dishes or tramping along ancient routes circling and spiralling out from London Town. On this day, we decided to risk the money for the train tickets and spend it in a bar near the station, instead. At that time, we often had to choose between eating, or drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes, we’d espouse both in favour of cheap alcohol. The bar had a pool table and, because it was mid-morning and no one else was there, the barman let us play for free. We’d bought pints of local bitter and a bag of crisps each for breakfast, and he seemed a benevolent sort, chatting amiably for a time, until he went to check the lines on a couple of barrels. We did not sit down, those chairs and benches looked like they were heavily impregnated with the ash and tar of centuries. The smell, I’m sure some of you remember—I do not miss that. We were busy talking about whether we should somehow move to Berlin, rather than Derby, how we needed more experience of different places to be able to write deeply, with a richness which comes from travel and excitement when the door opened and a man walked in. I’m sure you’ve probably met people like him. One look, and you know he is dangerous. Not the bluster and swagger of the gym-swollen and terminally lacking in sense, but the danger which comes from actually being dangerous. He glanced around the room quickly, noting there was no barman, looking us up and down, and that there was no one else there. We exchanged quick glances between ourselves, then said good morning and got back to the game at hand. Best to be polite. This man was not large, but he was wiry and carried himself with the surety of confidence and experience. ‘Are you here for the match?’ he asked, as we tried our best to shrink and somehow disappear, looking at our still mostly full pints and knowing we could not leave immediately without risking offence. ‘No,’ we replied quickly, in unison, ‘Waiting for a train back to Derby.’ We were not really interested in football and, proclaiming any foolish allegiance to a team in a bar near a railway station is not wise. We silently prayed he would simply let us be, especially as, at that moment, he took off his battered leather jacket and turned to the bar, showing the hilt of a knife in the back pocket of worn jeans. We thought we might have been saved by the return of the barman, who clearly knew and respected this man, immediately pouring him a pint and a double of whisky as a chaser. No money seemed to change hands. The man turned back to us and placed coins on the pool table. We couldn’t leave now, he couldn’t play himself, after all. I think we both thought the same thing—maybe throw that match between us, lose, so as to not have to play the stranger. And I think we both came to the same conclusion—better to play as well as we could, or we’d risk losing respect and setting us on a bad footing for what came next. He’d watched us both play already, after all and, in those days, we were both rather good players, hours spent on the tables at university the preceding years, days spent in bars. I’ve not played pool in a long, long time, now. Strangely, I can’t remember which of us won, but I do recall much of the conversation. At one point, he asked what we did, looking at us closely as he lit up another hand-rolled cigarette from the dying butt of the last, obviously expecting something more than ‘we work for a job agency, taking whatever sporadic, horrendous scraps and s**t they throw our way.’ We answered honestly. ‘We are writers.’ He didn’t bat an eyelid, just inhaled and exhaled then, in a cloud of Old Holborn smoke, took his shot. At another point, I’m not sure when, he took out his knife and placed it on the table, to be able to better bend over and stretch to reach the cue ball. His hands were scarred and rough, tattooed and lived-in. The barman watched us carefully, ignoring the knife, as the man continued the conversation. ‘Tough game, writing.’ We exchanged glances again, familiar with the hardest job in the world sketch in The Fast Show, featuring Paul Whitehouse’s character, Archie The Pub Bore. What followed was surprising, given how he looked and acted. Unlike Archie, he did not tell us he was a writer himself, but began to share advice on what he thought we should do, how we should approach writing and the world at large. It was, wondrously, sensible and carefully thought out. He talked about observation, about not missing a thing, about note taking and diaries and journals, and he spoke of using these things in our fiction—my novels and my friend’s scripts. He ended by talking about how we should ensure we have a strong nucleus of people we trust around us, if we are to stand a chance of making a living with words, people who understand what it means to be a writer. He finished with telling us that, if we were serious, we needed to get an agent, but to make sure we did our research first, find someone younger, who was still ambitious enough to ensure they took chances and also represented us with heart, mind, and soul. Eventually, it came time to leave that pub and that man, after he bought us another drink, not listening to our protestations about not being able to afford to reciprocate, that he had appreciated the company and conversation but, looking back, I wonder how much of that conversation actually included us talking. He did most of it and, to this day, I wonder who he was, what was his story? How did he know so much about what it meant to be a writer, both practically and also much, much deeper than that? I still remember the feel of his hand in mine as he shook it as we left, how strong and how sure it was. He genuinely seemed to have enjoyed our company. I’m not going to end this with a lesson, I’m seeing too many stories churned out by AI here which follow that pattern. The lesson—or lessons, plural—is/are already there, above. What I will say is that, this coming year, I really think it is time I follow that last piece of his advice, and find that agent. Whenever I’ve thought about an agent over the last few decades, I’ve always thought of that bar and those pool games—and it feels good to write down this snippet of memory and finally share it. Finally If 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 share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work. I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you. Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does. Get full access to The Crow's Nest at alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe [https://alexandermcrow.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]