ABOUT SALLIE
I grew up on a farm in Somerset, mostly to be found with my head in a book and my feet in the long grass. Neither of those things has changed much.
In my twenties, I swapped the meadows of Somerset for African drylands, becoming one of the world's leading researchers of long-term environmental change in the Kalahari and acquiring an incurable addiction to salt pans and sand dunes.
For more than two decades I have studied how landscapes change through time: how rivers shift course, lakes appear and disappear, climates fluctuate, and ecosystems adapt. Yet increasingly, I have found myself drawn not only to the landscapes themselves, but to the relationships people build with them. The ways we navigate, remember, name, care for, and find meaning in particular places. The stories landscapes hold and the stories we tell about them.
At a time when many of our relationships with the natural world have become increasingly abstracted, mediated, and distant, understanding those connections feels more important than ever. Not simply because landscapes are changing, but because our understanding of who we are is inseparable from the places that shape us.
This is my journey to explore and share some of the extraordinary stories that emerge where science, landscape, history, and human experience meet.