Gathering Days : A collection of things foraged and found

I follow the patterns in ever-widening circles. Gathering dust in the heat of summer. Rainwater in all seasons. Occasional snow, glimpsed in the kernel of a persimmon seed. Bramble, acorn, hawthorn and cherry. Tracing the lines of a landscape and the patterns of a year. Towards a greater appreciation of what was there all along.

Along the seasons of a year, Gathering Days recalls the ways in which the act of collecting might offer a sense of purpose in times of uncertainty. Walks across the fields and coasts of Wales bring encounters with stories from elsewhere – a quiet garden in Kyoto or a lamplit street in Seville.

Woven together, these contemplations of land, self and place form a memoir that celebrates the small yet miraculous moments of everyday life, while asking the question of how we might steady ourselves against a landscape.

Author: Ellie Evelyn Orrell

Memoirs, Popular psychology, Natural history

Published on 6 Aug 2026 by University of Wales Press.