Some things I’ve been thinking about lately: life in the city, nature trips, this year’s endless summer, and the climate crisis we live in, consciously or not.

Part I. Feel local

As a teenager, I looked forward to growing up. I pictured my future, projected my hopes and dreams on it, wondered which job I’d have. The thing I looked forward to the most was the freedom to do as I pleased – and, no, it doesn’t work like that, but my childhood and teenage self really didn’t know just yet. At a more realistic level, I looked forward to using my free time for what I chose to do instead of being stuck with homework after school and during weekends.

One thing about adults I paid a lot of attention to was the way people talked about the place they lived in. They inhabited and experienced it every day, moving nonchalantly around this place they had chosen for themselves. When I travelled, I always observed the locals: out on the street, in shops, at the supermarket checkout. I, a passenger in transit, would look at the people living there, notice how they moved around places that were so familiar to them, places I’d never seen before and was only then uncovering for the very first (and, with some of them, only) time.

I’ve always found it heartwarming to dwell on moments like these, moments of the everyday, so small and ordinary, yet so meaningful in their normalcy. Looking at them also made me a little nostalgic – elated to be travelling, exploring new places, yet a little ‘jealous’ of the everyday they shared with that place, which everyday I, for obvious reasons, would never experience there.

I’ve always wanted to experience places like a local, fully aware that it would never be possible, that it could never happen, yet no less eager nonetheless. The feeling would get heightened at twilight, the most nostalgic, evocative time of the day to me, when darkness sets in, but it’s not pitch black outside yet. There’s a unique quality to a twilight view, with lights coming up on the streets, windows lighting up in warm hues, the spell of blue hour enveloping it all.

In my teenage years and throughout my twenties, whenever I fantasised about where I’d eventually settle down, I would invariably picture a city. A large city with a bright cityscape, the inevitable hustle and bustle, traffic and crowds. I didn’t picture a specific city. That would become clearer later in time. I’m sure at one point it was New York, which remained quite a staple for a while, until it was promptly replaced by London. At that point I knew the European horizon had been set, and I wouldn’t choose to live outside Europe. I said it then, and that never changed.

Since I started travelling North and taking regular trips to nature, lots of things in my imaginary geography changed, including the outline of my imaginary city. In fact, it stopped being a city altogether. It turned into a smaller town, sitting somewhere between mountains and sea, much further up north of where I am now. In winter it snows a lot and the days are short, in summer it never gets too warm, not even at the peak of the season.

When travelling somewhere, I still observe the locals as I did when I was younger. I’d still like to get to know places in the same way: not (only) for their landmarks and most famous sites, but for the routes, streets and spots that make up the everyday life of the people that live there. It’s a bit like feeling nostalgic about lives I will never live. I can’t have been born, grown up, settled down everywhere, but I can and do imagine what it might be like.

When I think about the city where I’ve been living for eight years, I realise I’m still observing locals like I’m not one of them, like I'm not as familiar with the city just yet. It’s almost as if I knew I won’t be living here for much longer. I did initially think I’d only stay for a few months, so it made sense to feel that way back then. Eight years on, knowing I still feel the same way tells me more about myself than many other things my teenager self has learnt over the years. It’s comforting to know there’s always something new to be picked up along the way.

Part II. Life in the city

I live in a city and I don’t like it. I’ve been a city person for most of my life, but I don’t think I’m one anymore. I have a difficult connection with the city I live in, a place I used to like more than I do now. Every day off work meant a new walking route to explore somewhere new, every weekend was an opportunity to grow even more familiar with the urban landscape of my everyday. Now I don’t explore anymore. I can’t blame the city, though. It’s one of those ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ situations. The pandemic years changed me, and I’m not much of a fan anymore, the city is just doing what it can.

There is, however, one place I cherish a lot, and it’s the small hill across the street from where I live. A narrow trail snakes up through trees and orchards all the way to the top, a nice viewing spot opens up along the way, and birds are always plentiful around, especially in the early morning. So today around 6 I grabbed my camera and up I went, thinking I could do with a few shots. The sky was overcast, but I was lying awake in bed and I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep again.

Seconds after I left my flat, it started drizzling. I respectfully ignored that joke of a rainfall and kept going. The rain got stronger, but I was focused on spotting a bird on a tree branch up high, I couldn’t get distracted. I managed to take a few photos of blackbirds, a woodpigeon and a kestrel on a tree top, then it was suddenly pouring. I ran back to the road and found shelter under a porch, but the few minutes it took to get there were enough to get soaked. I waited for a bit, but it didn’t stop. I concluded that my photo walk had ended and I ran home.

I’d checked the forecast before getting out, but it only warned of a 50% chance of light rain. Instead, I got caught in a proper storm with strong rain, thunder and lightning. The full package. After weeks of daily forecasts alike, an orderly line of little sun icons and daily temperatures steadily above 30°, I was so relieved to be soaked. Just yesterday, out on a morning run, I looked in dismay at the patches of grass lining the pavement, rectangles of green turned the colour of hay, dried up to the root. And last week, on my way to work, I thought to myself: ‘Summer is going fast, it’s already the end of Jul- wait, it’s only the end of July?’. Time goes fast, but this summer is endless, and I’m so sorry that I want it to end so badly. But I do.

I think back to an article I read a few days ago by Italian writer and journalist Fabio Deotto, Why we don’t like summer anymore (Perché l’estate non ci piace più). He writes: ‘We used to look forward to summer. Now, what with extreme weather events and heatwaves, our physical and mental wellbeing is at risk, and the future of summer looms dark and alarming’. His words resonated with me, because they gave further validation to something I’ve experienced myself for the past 2-3 years: I dread summer. I’m a winter person, but I used to love lots of things about summer: seemingly endless daylight, evening ice creams, watermelon slices, light clothes, and roads emptied of cars when holidays call. I wish I still felt this way about it, but I don’t. This year I’m unable to appreciate anything other than birds (hello, summer visitors!) and flowers.

Part III. A life of trips

Trips to nature are my lifesaver. I do love the hill close to my flat, but it can’t do it all. During the week it’s my usual nature spot, my early-morning route, the place where I look for the green woodpecker I have yet to photograph and I run flower photos through my phone app to learn (and hopefully remember) their names. Weekends, though, are the time for trips away from the city.

There’s so much noise in the city. Everything is loud and everywhere is crowded, there’s always so little space and so little time. And so what I seek the most are silence, quiet and space. I am drawn to ponds, forests, open fields – places where no alien sounds can reach, where disconnect reveals true connections, where a ruffling sound is wings or wind.

The weekly trips I took between 2020 and 2022 for the Vysočina 101 book project taught me to love seasons. All of them. They taught me to look at the passing of the seasons, to notice the little things that mark the transition between them, to appreciate the beauty of it all. I love seasons because they exist. They’re there for you to see and, when ‘done right’, they transcend the mere calendar split. You see something out there, and you can tell the season from it. Daffodils, hyacinths and lilacs signal spring. Few things scream summer like the earliest sunrises, golden wheat and sunflower fields. Then it’s mushrooms and foliage, morning fog and chilly air. Last but not least, the shortest days and the coldest spells. And back to square one.

This is what I expect from seasons in the climate area where I live – not because I want it, but because we need it. But a lot of this pattern has been lost to global warming, and 2024 has been the worst I’ve seen so far. I’ll never forget the 25° degrees we had on 6 April, the angst I felt as I walked from pond to pond in Ořechov, terrified that it might only be the beginning of it all. It was, and the past few weeks have seen a dry spell with average daily temperatures well above 30°. More than once I’ve caught myself obsessively refreshing the weather app on my phone, hoping it will forecast cloudy skies at one point or another. A 50% chance of rain is something I cling to, it’s a glimmer of hope.

And even then, even when it says storms, is it going to cause damage? And a couple of hours of rain, what’s it going to solve anyway? There’s so much more to the climate crisis than that. I know, but it becomes unbearable to see the ground so dry, the grass turned yellow, the sky always blue. So even a two-hour rainfall is a blessing, and if it rains overnight, tomorrow morning the ground will be wet, the grass damp. No more than a reassuring placebo, but I’ll take that too, if it means I’ll see some rain.

This sense of urgency of the climate crisis is not something I’ve experienced for very long now, so I have yet to learn how to handle it best. Going to Svalbard in 2023 opened my eyes to the true scale of it, it made me acutely aware of its omnipresence in all things of life, the extent of its impact. Understanding it better was like learning something I didn’t know I needed to learn. More knowledge of the climate crisis also meant unleashing an eco-anxiety that was probably already latent but ultimately bound to reveal itself.

I could easily blame eco-anxiety for my fear of summer, but it wouldn’t be fair and it wouldn’t be right. I’m scared of summer because it reveals the climate crisis for what it is: real. There’s nothing abstract about it. To borrow Deotto’s words again, ‘While for the remaining nine months a year we can still tell ourselves that the planet is not in emergency mode (though, let’s face it, there’s plenty of evidence of the climate crisis also in the other seasons), in summer we’re forced to confront reality, though we often do that unconsciously’.

Life in the city

Scotland. A year of bird photography