Love Is A Toad: Exploring our relationship with nature

‘Uplifting, defiant, galvanising’ – Sophie Pavelle, author of Forget Me Not ‘Can you make eye contact with a slug? I couldn’t be sure, but it definitely felt like their betentacled and beady eyes locked with mine for a moment. . . Eye-to-eye, organism to organism, it felt like we were looking at each other.’ Lucy Lapwing grew up ‘playing out’. A woodlouse-collecting, snail-racing, tree-climbing, muddy-footed child, she spent more time playing outside than in. But whilst Lucy was always intrigued by the natural world, it wasn’t until later in life when her true love of nature began; the thrum, beauty and weirdness of the world around her filling her with an almost indescribable joy. But with this new-found love and intense appreciation came other feelings: worry, anger, grief. For every curlew she spotted, she noticed a distinct quietening of the hedgerows; for every beautiful old tree, there would also exist destruction. As Lucy wrangled over this thorny contradiction, her love for nature jostling against her grief at its plight, she decided to unpick these emotions, if not to heal our relationship with nature, then at least to understand it better. In her book, Love Is A Toad, Lucy takes to the fields, moors and footpaths of the UK with her fellow nature enthusiasts and digs down into the emotions which nature inspires. Through these interactions and Lucy’s own story and observations, she explores everything from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and a rallying cry, Love Is A Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the world, exploring its complexity in all its muddy, messy and beautiful glory.