To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious.’In exquisite prose John Lewis-Stempel records the passing seasons in an ancient meadow on his farm. His unique and intimate account of the birth, life, and death of the flora and fauna—from the pair of ravens who have lived there longer than he has to the minutiae underfoot—is threaded throughout with the history of the field and recalls the literature of other observers of our natural history in a remarkable piece of writing that follows the tradition of Jeffries, Mabey, and Deakin.