In love with the wild and wilderness
Sureet Singh
Jonathan Scott, a naturalist, zoologist, writer, artist, acclaimed wildlife photographer and eminent TV presenter, is living a life that most people can only dream of. He has presented many popular series like Big Cat Diary, Big Cat Week, Elephant Diaries, Big Bear Diary, Dawn to Dusk, Flamingo Watch and Africa Watch for BBC, Animal Planet, and Discovery Channel among others. He has spent the better portion of his life in the wild, with all its inconveniences, hardships, challenges and exhilarations. In this autobiography, he takes us through the landscape of his life spent travelling through the length and breadth of Africa, Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.
Author of over 30 books, many of these co-authored with his wife Angie, Scott has many a story to tell in this beautifully illustrated book. Through his exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of animals and birds and mesmerising photographs rich in colour and detail, he portrays the intricacies of his love affair with wildlife. Also included are heartwarming pictures of his home, family and friends. He talks about the journeys undertaken, animals encountered, people he met, and experiences gained. Whether it is waiting for hours to get the right shot of an animal or being stranded alone in a Tanzanian forest in a fierce storm or escaping death and watching friends being killed in a terrorist attack; Scott’s many experiences can be variedly described as fantastic and even dangerous, but never dull.
Scott’s story is about Africa as much as it is about his own life. He describes Africa, his home since 1974, as ‘A living jigsaw: Climate, soil, plants and animals locked together in the magic circle of life, death and rebirth’. The animals he has photographed and of whom he writes with an extraordinary sensitivity and unmatched interest have been an integral part of his life.
In a testament to his untiring love for the natural world, Scott talks with pain of the damage inflicted upon it by mankind. Never overbearing, he registers his complaints with deep insights about ‘actions taken in the name of development in a world where nothing is truly sacred anymore’. He makes a potent case for conservation, calling for ‘environmental enlightenment’ and charting out ‘workable conservation imperatives to be embraced and implemented by the political elite’.
This is not a book just about animals, nature, photography and conservation, Scott also shares his thoughts on books, science, and spirituality among other things. A few key incidents from his life shaped him as a person, such as his father dying when he was two-year-old, or a fall he sustained during childhood, or giving up an academic career in South Africa due to his aversion to apartheid. Besides the obvious highs of an adventurous life, such as winning the ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ award, he has experienced significant emotional lows as well. Be it battling an obscure syndrome or cancer of the bladder or coping with anxiety, depression, dissociation, mania and obsessive compulsion, Scott bares his heart out with a refreshing lack of reticence.
A great ambassador for nature and wildlife, Jonathan Scott has lived a great life. The book will appeal to wildlife enthusiasts and photographers, naturalists and conservationists, and to the average reader alike. A delightful read.
