For five decades Richard Mabey has been a pioneering voice in modern nature writing. From the rediscovery of foraging that led to `Food for Free`, through his groundbreaking expeditions in the `edgelands` in the 1970s, to his reflections on the musicality of bird-song, he has consistently explored new ways of thinking about nature and its relation to our lives. In `Turning the Boat for Home`, he introduces pieces from his rich writing life that reflect on how his ideas evolved. At the heart is a passionate belief that Earth is a commonwealth, of all species. Mabey recalls the fight against the commercial afforestation of the Scottish peatlands and recounts the experience of running a `community woodland`, one of the first in Britain. Plants, the organisms that underpin all life, have been a source of constant fascination. In his encyclopaedic `Flora Britannica` Mabey explored how deeply they are embedded in our popular culture. But they are also autonomous beings with their own agendas, as experienced in his own `serendipitous` garden `in which wild organisms improvise their own landscapes`.From a new viewpoint, `the slow-moving carapace` of a boat on the Norfolk Broads, Mabey ponders the migration of geese and the home-loving whirligig beetles. His epiphany is that a sense of ”neighbourliness” may be the best model for our relationship with the rest of the living world. Throughout there is a commitment to writing and to language, which may be `our greatest ecological gift`. In a celebration that links the work of the poet John Clare with the political warnings of Rachel Carson, Mabey suggests that `the answer to the still present threat of a silent spring is for us to sing against the storm.`