It’s in our backyard
Journeys To the Nearby: A Gardener Discovers the Gentle Art of Untravelling
by Elspeth Bradbury
Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2025
$22.95 / 9781553807247
Reviewed by Natalie Virginia Lang
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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
When my sister and I were small, our hours were marked by dalliances in the gardens and forests of our family home. She placed letters beneath strawberry leaves and mushroom caps, hoping to spot the fairies who wrote back, while I pondered at perceptibly perfect plant shapes and shades. Both of us were oxygenated by the scent that only comes from sitting so close to the foliage of carefully cultivated gardens and in the wider expanses of neighbouring forests. These were the places we travelled to when we were too young to leave the backyard. These were the places where we tempted danger and excitement, visiting a strange galaxy of otherworldly life swimming beneath a creek’s bubbling surface, or the hidden treasures kept in the crevices of rock walls dangling with moss and ferns and frogs. We discovered the variety of life coexisting in the smallest of ecosystems— from the soil beneath our vegetable garden to dozens of pollenating species flitting from flower to flower, walking barefoot on grassy patches and ferny thresholds, life was everywhere, uniquely wild, abundant, and collectively involved in the great tapestry of existence.
Elspeth Bradbury, is the co-author of The Real Garden Road Trip, The Garden Letters, and the poetry collection Is that you this is me. In her new book, Journeys to the Nearby: A Gardener Discovers the Gentle Art of Untravelling, Bradbury has written and illustrated a collection of contemplative and observational essays inviting readers on voyages not to the wide expanses of the globe but instead to the smallest and most dynamic moments happening in her own backyard. With an adventurous tone of discovery, Bradbury echoes the voices of explorers and writers who inspire her. Yet rather than flinging herself across the globe in search of beauty and daring in far off places, Bradbury reminds us that worldly radiance, intrigue, curiosity for the unknown, newfound perspectives, and that inexhaustible awe often attributed to globetrotting, can be found no farther than our own backyard— if we only choose to look for it.
Journeys to the Nearby is written as a collection of essays in Bradbury’s backyard garden following the four seasons on British Columbia’s west coast. The book is a whimsically fluid read that invites us to consider the often underestimated value of what is discoverable right in front of us. These discoveries are made, for Bradbury, by contemplating her love for a cherished cobblestone path, the wonder and majesty of playful hummingbirds, strange bird foot patterns in quilted winter snow, and the ephemeral beauty of trilliums in springtime.
At once entrancing and deeply comforting, Bradbury takes readers on a journey to those places that are so near and dear to our hearts, but which we may have forgotten about in the noise and chaos and pressures of life. Many of us have come to believe that adventure is out there and that to understand the diversity that makes our world so incredible, we need to seek out new places, new faces, and new experiences— that we must travel to the unknown and challenge ourselves to see the world through new eyes, cultures, and ways of being. These are certainly important and exciting pursuits, and Bradbury herself delights in travellers’ tales and expeditions in search of alternative ways of moving through life, but as she reminds us in every micro-tale and personally penned sketch collected within this book, “plenty of the world is available close to home.” All one need do is introduce ourselves.
Through spring, summer, fall, and winter, Bradbury draws readers into the microcosm of her backyard garden where each season reveals a strangeness akin to any foreign place we have not yet come to know. And so, like these spaces one could travel to, we must begin by learning about where we are going to and what is special there. Learning the names of the flowers and trees, bugs, birds, and bees that, in this part of the world are central to the indigenous identity of this place, is the first step in connecting with and understanding the diversity at home. These names, Bradbury points out, “evoke memories that tie us to our history and this piece of land.” Coming to know this land, deeply and fully, is an important part of introducing ourselves to the world at our fingertips. Because, for Bradbury, a place, a garden, the natural spaces we visit, transcend our own lives and exist as part of the past and the future— a future that we are responsible for, yet we cannot care for nature if we do not know nature. And so, we must allow for a certain “soft fascination”— to stay put and lean in to those more local “experiences that capture our attention in such a subtle way they still leave room for quiet reflection.” This reflection and coming to know our own backyard, one could argue, is more important today than ever before.
Like any seasoned and respectful traveller, we must attempt to connect with where we are going, even if it is only to the nearby. How do we go about doing this? Bradbury suggests slowing down, seeking small and passive joys in observation, in planting a flower, in noticing the subtle changes of each season, and even looking up now and then to ponder the expanse of the skies, as one tool to help us reach this connection. After all, “real seeing takes time, involves intellect, emotions, and all the senses.” Connect by taking time and space to see and hear and breathe and notice. Connect by learning the history and namesakes of where we are, the land and earth we are caretakers for. For these moments of exploration are “precarious periods of suspension.” where worldviews and values have the potential to widen and shift. We can open ourselves up to what is right before our very eyes and experience the adventures that await there— what a gift to behold.
Journeys to the Nearby is many things collected between the book’s pages. It is sketches and stories of creatures and dreams, personal histories, fears and frustrations, uncertainties and the mistakes we make. It is a record of the meaning of daily life— if we are willing and able to slow down, to ponder the shape of a flower, or the depth and expanse of a cloudless sky, or the life cultivating in the soil beneath our toes, if only we take time to notice. This is more than a book on gardening with some tips on responsible bearproofing and ethical discussions on whether or not to keep a pond or fill it in, this is a book that suggests we should “make our way in peace among such humble gifts as a wren’s song, a butterfly, a passing kindness or a smile exchanged, [for] isn’t that how most of us would ultimately choose to spend our days?”
To pick up this book, is to pick up a guide to journeying in our own backyard. It is an offering of space to dally with one’s connection to a place, without having to go so far at all. Instead, we can notice the world directly before us, in a flower pot on our windowsill, in the park next to a trickling stream or among the trees, wherever life is discovered, and observe that life, wherever we find it, can be as poignant and ephemeral as a pink peony. You need not travel to wild and distant places to feel the great adventure of life. You can be in awe right here in our own backyard. All there is to do is look. Look up, look down, look close, look around. Look. And, remember that, as Bradbury quotes from Margaret Laurence: “Sometimes a destination turns out to be quite other than expected.”
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Natalie Virginia Lang is a teacher and writer. She is an alumnus of the Graduate Liberal Studies program at SFU and has contributed essays to The British Columbia Review: “Living with Oil?,” “Remnants of Sumas Mountain,” and “Letters from the Pandemic: Dear Will.” Lang is the author of Remnants: Reveries of a Mountain Dweller (Caitlin Press, 2023), a memoir inviting readers to re-examine our relationships with the natural world. [Editor’s note: Natalie Virginia Lang has reviewed books by Kate J. Neville, Steven Earle, Betsy Warland, Christina Myers, Catherine McGregor and Shailoo Bedi (eds.), and Rick Antonson for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster
