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Description

fine line drawing ......put some fish in and more detail

"
Tarka the Otter follows the birth, ‘joyful water-life’ and inevitable death of a male otter – Tarka, the Water Wanderer – in the ‘country of the two rivers’, namely the Rivers Taw and Torridge in North Devon which share a common estuary beyond Barnstaple, and the famous Braunton Burrows (extensive sand-dunes, until recently a National Nature Reserve), but also ranging the length and breadth of Exmoor and the coast from Lynmouth and round back to Baggy Point, the brooding cliff next to the Burrows, and by following the Torridge inland, across to Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor.

Tarka was born in ‘Owlery Holt’ (a ‘holt’ is the name given to dry holes amongst tangled tree roots in river banks that are an otter’s resting places) near Canal Bridge (actually an old aqueduct, very picturesque) on the river Torridge near Torrington (still a most magical place today). The opening of the book sets the scene:

Twilight over meadow and water, the eve-star shining above the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying kra-a-ark! as his slow wings carried him down to the estuary. A whiteness drifting above the sere reeds of the riverside, for the owl had flown from under the middle arch of the stone bridge that once had carried the canal across the river.

Below Canal Bridge, on the right bank, grew twelve great trees, with roots awash. . . .

That opening word ‘Twilight’ has been changed from the original ‘Dimmity’: both Sir John Fortescue and T. E. Lawrence thought ‘dimmity’ a little precious: but HW retained it elsewhere in the book! I have explained elsewhere that I see a big similarity about those twelve great trees to the opening of W. H. Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago,where Hudson has twenty-five Ombu trees growing in a row (HWSJ 41, AW, ‘A Purple Thread’, pp. 39-49, see p. 47). Hudson, after Richard Jefferies, was one of HW’s most important influences

Description

fine line drawing ......put some fish in and more detail

"
Tarka the Otter follows the birth, ‘joyful water-life’ and inevitable death of a male otter – Tarka, the Water Wanderer – in the ‘country of the two rivers’, namely the Rivers Taw and Torridge in North Devon which share a common estuary beyond Barnstaple, and the famous Braunton Burrows (extensive sand-dunes, until recently a National Nature Reserve), but also ranging the length and breadth of Exmoor and the coast from Lynmouth and round back to Baggy Point, the brooding cliff next to the Burrows, and by following the Torridge inland, across to Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor.

Tarka was born in ‘Owlery Holt’ (a ‘holt’ is the name given to dry holes amongst tangled tree roots in river banks that are an otter’s resting places) near Canal Bridge (actually an old aqueduct, very picturesque) on the river Torridge near Torrington (still a most magical place today). The opening of the book sets the scene:

Twilight over meadow and water, the eve-star shining above the hill, and Old Nog the heron crying kra-a-ark! as his slow wings carried him down to the estuary. A whiteness drifting above the sere reeds of the riverside, for the owl had flown from under the middle arch of the stone bridge that once had carried the canal across the river.

Below Canal Bridge, on the right bank, grew twelve great trees, with roots awash. . . .

That opening word ‘Twilight’ has been changed from the original ‘Dimmity’: both Sir John Fortescue and T. E. Lawrence thought ‘dimmity’ a little precious: but HW retained it elsewhere in the book! I have explained elsewhere that I see a big similarity about those twelve great trees to the opening of W. H. Hudson’s Far Away and Long Ago,where Hudson has twenty-five Ombu trees growing in a row (HWSJ 41, AW, ‘A Purple Thread’, pp. 39-49, see p. 47). Hudson, after Richard Jefferies, was one of HW’s most important influences