Who am I?

Who am I you ask? Well, that’s a very good question and one I’ve been asking myself throughout just about all my sentient life. How I envy those with a one word answer… I’m a vet, I’m a doctor, I’m a mechanic, or an opera singer (OK, that’s two words, but you get the drift). I on the other hand am no one thing. I have flitted willy-nilly through life, touching fleetingly on so many things that auto-definition fails me. Better to start with the indisputable facts…

That's me... always with the same enthusiasm, but a very many years ago.

Talking with owls and looking for magic

among the hedgerows and long grass

I was born in long ago 1957 in the British countryside where I grew up running wild among the fields and hedgerows, earnestly discussing the meaning of life with the owls nesting in our back garden and grovelling entranced among the thistles and brambles on scratched knees, enthralled by the mystical world of the myriad of life forms that thrived there. They were my fairy tales and my soap operas. Urged on by my nature-loving mother and botanist father, I needed no other magic and that has remained so to this day.
At the ripe old age of 16, I learnt to type on my mother’s old Remington portable typewriter, convinced I was born to be a writer and a naturalist. Or a naturalist and a writer. But although I suppose I have in some ways touched on both of these, circumstances soon grabbed me by the hand (or was it the throat?) and shoved me unceremoniously down other roads. Since then I have earned my living in many ways, from waitress to journalist at the European Parliament, in the press and fund-raising offices of an internationally renowned archaeological project, as a hiking guide in France and Italy, as a teacher of English as a foreign language and as a translator, to name but a few. All these have both given me something and taken something away. What is left is who I am today.

Flitting willy-nilly through life…

Somewhere in the midst of all this (and don’t ask me why), I also changed countries, moving from the UK to Italy where I have lived and worked for the last thirty years or so. And maybe one day I’ll move on again, across another frontier, to another country where I’ll learn to dream in another language. Because frontiers are no more than lines drawn by men (and women) on a map and I’ve never really understood why they should matter so much on our spherical planet where all things exist in the continuity of time and space. At least until proved otherwise.

At work on the limestone mountains of Abruzzo.
There is always another path to explore, another horizon to aim for.

But I digress… back to the business in question. So at the end of the day, who, or what, am I? Well, when I rummage around in my fragmented ragbag of a life, I come up with three threads which, in the good times and the bad, have somehow held together all the rest: words, photography and, above all else, nature. And it is these three threads that are woven together in “lynkos”, a name that came to me uninvited in a dream some twenty or so years ago and has accompanied me ever since.

Who knows what awaits me around the next corner!

So that’s me taken care of…

what about “lynkos”?

Lynkos is part lynx, perceptive, fiercely diffident and attributed with the clear vision it takes to needle out the truth behind deception, part the too often lacking “link” between nature and the world of man, between enthusiast and expert, between layman and the world of science.So that’s me explained as best I can. Pleased to meet you and happy to have your company on this stretch of my life’s road, be it short or be it long, guided by the curiosity to discover what awaits me around the next corner, even if it’s just… another corner.

Sarah Gregg

For my Italian-speaking friends (or anyone wanting to translate into another language), I recommend DeepL translator available clicking here or also as a browser extension for Google Chrome.

Per i miei amici di lingua italiana (o chiunque voglia tradurre in un’altra lingua), consiglio DeepL translator disponibile cliccando qui o anche come estensione per il browser Google Chrome.