Letters published in the Guardian thank Phil Gates for his nearly 40 years of country diary columns, after his final piece appeared on 19 September. Jim McManners and Ann MacAskill both express their appreciation for his work.
A source of learning and inspiration
Jim McManners, from Trimdon Grange, County Durham, says he was "with great sadness" that he read that Phil Gates's country diary piece was to be his last. He describes his habit of checking the column as soon as he gets his hands on the paper to see if it was a "Phil Gates diary day", then to savour it.
He explains that this is partly because the diaries are from his own county, but mainly because he has never failed to learn something new and interesting about some overlooked or unspectacular species in the natural world, despite this being his subject. The information in the column would usually find its way into his teaching. He recalls a class of 10-year-olds calculating and measuring their jumps after learning from Phil's piece that a springtail can use its furcula to jump many times its own body length.
A connection to the natural world
Ann MacAskill, from Sheffield, says she does not know anything about Phil Gates, but she must have read and enjoyed countless country diaries by him over the years. These became especially important during a long period of being unable to get outside independently or walk at all. Country diary became her news from the world outside – not news about the never-ending machinations of humankind but of the world she really missed: the sights, sounds and backstories of the wild flower and the calling bird.
Now that she is taking her first slow steps into local woods, she intends to follow the Phil Gates method and marvel at what she can find at her feet. "There is indeed much marvelling there to carry me on into my 70s as I get back on my feet," she writes. "Thank you, Phil Gates, whoever you are."
