White Lion sanctuary at Sandown – is this rare species facing a caged future? Mags MacKean blog © It was a biting wind, fresh from the arctic. This part of the Isle of Wight is usually sheltered from the prevailing south-westerlies. Not that day. The icy blasts tore straight over the beach into the car […]
It was Friday evening – and I was saturated with the coverage of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. His repeated election pledge, to “make America great again”, flowed on from a picture of a diseased nation: a “carcass” wasteland of outdated industry, gangs, poverty and the forgotten. Transformation wasn’t being promised through examples of past triumphs, […]
The Somerset Levels are moody even on ordinary days. As dull light flattens the wetland’s subtle variations, its features stand out all the more distinct: Glastonbury Tor looming beyond the marshes, reeds, lone trees and numberless birds of varied kinds. Among them, Peregrines, Fowl, Marsh Harriers, Snipe and Redshanks. The Levels are famed for the […]
The Power of Slow, Steady Change, + a ritual to inspire a new story Every manifest creation has birthed over time. This stream in the Lake District lit up in the blazing winter sun as twisting gold. It looked so mesmeric through the car window that I pulled up onto the verge, and scrambled over […]
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/how-one-woman-gave-up-8107842 News Real Life Stories BBC How one woman gave up her high-powered career to climb mountains 12:01, 3 JUN 2016 UPDATED 12:13, 3 JUN 2016 BY MAGS MACKEAN Mags MacKean gave up her high-powered career to pursue her dream of climbing mountains – only to find she got just as burnt out following her […]
The nature of adventure: embracing risk. Mags MacKean (c) Many dream of the thrill of stripping life – and all its pressures – to the basics: heading off on a long distance hike. The rewards are in its promise: relying on strength, stamina and the vision to see a route through – to complete a […]
When The Door Jams. Short story by Mags MacKean Weariness makes her confused – at least that’s how she explains boarding the wrong train. She is too surprised to feel anything like annoyance. That comes later. For now, she is washed out, spat out, gazing at an unremarkable platform without the promise of anything to […]
I felt the tug of curiosity as soon as my friend told me: the largest Yew forest in the UK. “Perhaps in Europe”, Daniel added. “A grove with some of the oldest trees in the land – so wide you can’t begin to hug them.” Daniel was also a ‘local boy’ – which accounted for […]
Forwards To The Beginning: Being In the Source Of Time Time is fickle as well as inexorable. Describing it can never capture how it is truly experienced – because those moments relived are held in memory. However time’s passing is measured – as lines etched on my face, the quicksand of seconds, minutes and hours, […]
I was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Late Night Woman’s Hour with Lauren Laverne (tx: Friday 26th Feb 2016), with veteran columnist Katharine Whitehorn, Author Madeleine Bunting, and shepherdess and mother-of-eight, Amanda Owen. Inevitably we each had a unique take on “Me Time” – what is it and what makes us yearn it? How […]