EXETER LIVES
Q&A
H
istory and horticulture are twin obsessions for Exeter-based Kathryn Aalto. Raised in the San Joaquin Valley of California, she upped sticks to Devon in 2007, for work, and is today a renowned writer, historian, lecturer and garden designer. Her recent book The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh was described by The Washington Post as “a honey pot of nostalgia”. Where do you call home and what makes it special? I live in Exeter on top of Argyll Road, one of the highest vantage points in Exeter. I can see across to Dartmoor and nearly to the English Channel. It’s close to the city but in Duryard Valley – lots of countryside. What inspired you to write The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh? I am obsessed with ways literature and landscapes intersect. The background to AA Milne’s seemingly simple children’s stories is fascinating and masterful. AA Milne was an ardent walker and was inspired by real places near his East Sussex home. He moved there from London to give his real son, Christopher Robin, the kind of extraordinary childhood in the natural world that he himself had. I write all about it in the book. What piece of music would you put on at the end of a trying day? A Chopin nocturne. What’s your karaoke song of choice? Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee. What has been your proudest moment? As a writer, hitting the New York Times Best Seller list. As a mother, creating three kind, conscientious and capable children. As a general human, trusting my instincts. What’s your earliest childhood memory? Riding a red tricycle around a eucalyptus tree on a warm spring day in California when I was three years old, wearing funky ’70s clothes my grandmother made.
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KATHRYN AALTO The California-born polymath loves ‘olde worlde’ Devon and working out to dubstep If your nearest and dearest had to describe you, what would they say? “She’s at her best in the early morning. Should not be poked with a stick after 8pm.” When did you last cry? It was more than a cry, but an apoplectic fit: when I woke up the day after the US presidential elections and realised that my countrymen elected a charlatan. When people ask “So what’s Exeter like?” what do you say? After a decade, I’m still trying to figure that out! I can’t tell if Devon is hip California cool or backward Appalachia. (For the record, I like ‘hip backward’. Maybe that’s ‘retro’?) As for Exeter, it’s a quiet college town to me.
My favourite place is a wooden table near the fire at The Nobody Inn in Doddiscombsleigh. What are you reading/listening to/watching at the moment? I’ve just finished reading Richard Mabey’s award-winning Gilbert White: A Biography of the Naturalist and Author of The Natural History of Selborne. I don’t watch TV but, to step outside my work and to be inspired by storytelling structures, I see a film a week at the Picturehouse in Exeter. And I am really into syncopated dubstep when I work out.
Who would play you in a film about your life? Sigourney Weaver.
If you had a time machine, which era would you return to and why? For the record, I’m fond of modern vaccines and our long lives. But I’d like to step into a time machine to be transported to the tall-grass prairie of North America as a badass Choctaw warrior. Pre-European culture in North America appeals to me.
Your favourite spots locally? I travel a lot as an author and speaker in America, so when I’m in Devon, I like to go ‘olde worlde.’
kathrynaalto.com