Dara McAnulty - Diary of a Young Naturalist

ABOUT THE BOOK

Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of 15-year-old Dara McAnultys world. From spring and through a year in his home patch in Northern Ireland, Dara spent the seasons writing. These vivid, evocative and moving diary entries about his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world are raw in their telling.

Diary of a Young Naturalist portrays Daras intense connection to the natural world, and his perspective as a teenager juggling exams and friendships alongside a life of campaigning. In writing this book, Dara explains, I have experienced challenges but also felt incredible joy, wonder, curiosity and excitement. In sharing this journey my hope is that people of all generations will not only understand autism a little more but also appreciate a childs eye view on our delicate and changing biosphere.

Contents

For my family

This diary chronicles the turning of my world, from spring to winter, at home, in the wild, in my head. It travels from the west of Northern Ireland in County Fermanagh to the east in County Down. It records the uprooting of a home, a change of county and landscape, and at times the de-rooting of my senses and my mind. Im Dara, a boy, an acorn. Mum used to call me lon dubh (which is Irish for blackbird) when I was a baby, and sometimes she still does. I have the heart of a naturalist, the head of a would-be scientist, and bones of someone who is already wearied by the apathy and destruction wielded against the natural world. The outpourings on these pages express my connection to wildlife, try to explain the way I see the world, and describe how we weather the storms as a family.

I started to write in a very plain bungalow surrounded by families who kept their children behind closed doors, and empty-nesters who manicured their gardens and lawns with scissors yes, I actually witnessed this. This is where sentences first began to form, where wonder grappled with frustration on the page, and where our garden (unlike any other in the cul-de-sac) became a meadow during the spring and summer months, with wildflowers and insects and a sign that read Bee and Bee staked in the long grasses, and where our family spent hours and hours observing the abundance that other gardens lacked, all of us gloriously indifferent to the raised eyebrows of neighbours that appeared from behind curtains from time to time.

Weve moved on since then, crossed the country to make another home, and not for the first time. Weve lived in many places during my short life, in a kind of nomadic existence. But wherever we settle, our home is crammed with books, skulls, feathers, politics, unbridled debates, tears, laughter and joy. Some people believe that roots grow from bricks and mortar, but ours spread like mycelium networks, connected to a well of life lived together, so that wherever we go we stay rooted.

My parents, both from working-class backgrounds, were the first generation of university-goers and graduates in their families, and they are still fresh with ideals for making the world a better place. This means that were not rich materially, but as Mum says we are rich in many other ways. Dad is and always has been a scientist (marine and now conservation). Hes brought alive the secrets and knowledge that wild places hold and explained the mysteries of nature to us all. Mums career path resembles the way she crosses a stream: never in a straight line. Music journalist, voluntary sector, academic she still does a little of all these things as well as teaching my nine-year-old sister, Blthnaid, at home. Blthnaids name means blossoming one, and at the moment shes a fairy expert who can give you a multitude of insect facts, keeps pet snails and also fixes all the electrical equipment in the house (which Mum boggles over). I also have a brother called Lorcan fierce one who is thirteen. Lorcan is a self-taught musician and never fails to rouse in us sheer wonder and confusion all at once. Hes also an adrenaline junkie think running down mountains, jumping off cliffs into the sea, and generally going through life with the energy of a neutron star. Then theres Rosie, a rescue greyhound with severe flatulence and a brindle coat, whom we adopted in 2014. Shes our tiger-dog. We call her the living cushion, and shes a wonderful companion and stress reliever. Me, well, Im the pensive one, always with dirty hands and pockets stuffed with dead things and (sometimes) animal scat.

Before I sat down to write this diary, I had also been writing an online blog. A good few people enjoyed it and said more than once I should write a book. Which is quite amazing really, as a teacher once told my parents Your son will never be able to complete a comprehension, never mind string a paragraph together. Yet here we are. My voice is bubbling up, volcano-like, and all my frustrations and passions may just explode into the world as I write.

Not only is our family bound together by blood, we are all autistic, all except Dad hes the odd one out, and hes also the one we rely on to deconstruct the mysteries of not just the natural world but the human one too. Together, we make for an eccentric and chaotic bunch. Were pretty formidable, apparently. Were as close as otters, and huddled together, we make our way in the world.

In the darkness my dreams are interrupted. Im somewhere between swimming to the surface andcoming up for air when the flute catches my consciousness. The bedroom walls disappear. The space between my bed and the garden narrows, becomes one. I rise without moving, pinned by the heaviness of sleep. The notes keep falling on my chest. Now I can see the blackbird in my mind, its testosterone arrows flying as the territorial sonatas spread across the dawn. Engrossed in this symphony, awake and thinking, the whirring of my brain begins.

Spring varies from space to space, but for me its the sights and sounds swirling around my everyday, from sky to roots, that hold the most magic. Spring is the frog that crossed our path at the beginning of our time in this house our first encounter was a splodge of spawn left quickly on the road, its invisible pathway intruded upon by modernity. Upset, we dug out a watery sanctuary with hope: a small bucket of water buried and filled with broken clay pots, pebbles, plants and some sticks for the entrance and exit. We didnt really know if it would work. (Anything deeper wouldve needed a digger to break through the boulder clay that were blessed with in our suburban Enniskillen garden.) But there was another meeting, the following year, when our amphibian friend danced a jig on the grass and was joined by another, leaving us a gift of frogspawn in the bucket-refuge. We were exultant, and our whoops of excitement could beheard from the bottom of the hill, drowning out for a moment the sound of cars travelling to Sligo or Dublin, and even rallying against the background noise of the concrete factory nearby.

The ebb and flow of time punctuated by the familiar brings a cycle of wonder and discovery every year, just as if its the first time. That rippling excitement never fades. The newness is always tender.