Necessary Beauty

The sand martin colony at Portinscale has almost gone now; the late breeding pairs are still returning regularly with food to a couple of nests, but the intense activity we saw weeks ago is all but finished. I’ve been afraid of this discovery. Already it heralds the passing of summer; by August many of the adults and juveniles will gather in the south east ready to make the long haul back to Africa.

And where have I been in all that time? What happened to my promise to come and visit these delightful creatures regularly? The opportunity and hope of early summer that I felt coursing through me as I watched this colony back then has dissipated; equally flown, if that is not too crass an analogy. I abandoned this for a number of reasons, much to my own detriment. Firstly, the recent influx of summer visitors, hordes of tourists suffocating the town and surrounding countryside, treating the land like a giant theme park has simply put me off my usual walks into the land; secondly, the recent debilitations of a period of relative poverty has meant taking on a menial job which, though at times has been a pleasure, has limited my time and energy; lastly, I don’t think I’ve recovered my joy for this landscape here since returning from Suffolk, which I still view as rich and enthralling as any I’ve ever experienced.

So visiting the colony again tonight was meant to be a rejuvenating activity; a chance for stillness, escape, reconnecting with something tangible in the land that I could read well and identify with as being part of this place, this time - and I believed would provide an opportunity to be inspired again perhaps, or at least simply to just take time to sit and watch –

I crouch on the bank opposite as before, the low hanging branches of the trees now in full summer leaf form a partial hide - a sunbeam breaks through the low raincloud and illuminates the nest site and the glad sound of the freshly swollen River Greta is just a few feet before me – I count maybe eight martins in all, perhaps ten – it is still early evening so it is possible that the majority are elsewhere, feeding on the clouds of flies and bugs that gather low over the river, but certainly most of the young have flown the nest. Yet this evening all of this feels strangely temporary, unimportant, with far less impact on my spirit than ever before – they lack the sustenance I am used to and this realisation is shocking, frightening – I am too tired, too undermined for this perfect picture to get through to me - I cannot say I am as happy as I once was – there is a great deal of difficulty in the days and I so abhor this kind of self-pity but find I cannot fight it, the resources have gone, which was one reason for getting out here, to recharge myself – I crave an empty mind, a desire to start all over again – you see it’s a masochist’s dream this writing lark, this ‘creating game’ – I am in pain when I don’t do any, I am in pain when I do – A process of releasing some juice from the bottle trying so eagerly to drain it, to get to the bottom, pouring it out or drinking it yet there always being the same amount left; and at the bottom there’s the terrifying voice reiterating over and over that I’m just not good enough - and so each day, as far back as I can remember, I’ve been attempting to fighting it off, trying to shut it up, to prove it wrong – yet still the fear that it may be right lingers on.

I realise that instead of looking outward on this visit I’ve done nothing but look inward – shying away from the necessary beauty.

So I move. It’s all I can do to try to slough off this mood, gain some more ‘hunkering down’ as John Clare would put it, get right in there with nature until you disappear. I scramble over the bank a little way downriver and sit on a low outcrop of rock that juts into the water so that it seems to me I am marooned mid-river. To my right the water comes charging even though the level is low; to my left it runs away and the quick shifting current over submerged rocks becomes clear – it is exhilarating, child-like, to be there so close, that plane of existence within reach; something tangible perhaps to break my mood?

And then all this despondency, all this overwhelming bleakness is swept away by the arrival of a Kingfisher. A tell-tale brief flash of white and the bird rests opposite at the base of a scraggy bush overlooking the martin colony. I am lucky, it appears to have no knowledge of my presence so remains close, intimate - I am overcome – my nervous system re-lights, I feel the blood start to pump again, all that leaden weight evaporates instantly; the full knowledge that often nature knows what I need far more than I know myself becomes apparent. I sit very still mouthing silent exclamations, idiot prayers; with the bird as much as I can be, my binoculars fixed on it, my eyes absorbing everything it does, every tiny millimetre of it as it watches the water, curves it’s head round to preen a flight feather or two with the long bill. It sits there for a good minute or two before lifting its head catching sight of something interesting and plunging into the shallows before darting off upstream.

I sit breathless, alert to anything that might herald its return. The martins continue to wheel and dive and now even they appear to glow. I have been offered another chance to believe in what I’ve always known that any time spent close to nature is of far more benefit to me than the struggles away from it, even in the pursuit of one’s goals.

The rain comes in; a fine mist of water and with one tip seeming to erupt from Skiddaw a huge rainbow forms. It is one of those moments when the consummate beauty of things takes hold; but also when its fragility becomes equally apparent.

Cumbria 29/7/06

On Being A Killjoy

I don't feel awkward about it. It's what I've known for a long time. Perhaps it is to do with having been a vegetarian for 23 years; having been a birder for even longer; having been in awe of the Hertfordshire landscape where I grew up and learning through observation at an early age of the important and fragile balance that man and nature live in and appreciating how the latter gave far more than it received. I don't know. But I do know that I am a killjoy. And I'm proud of it.

What this means is that when I see a family on holiday - Mum, Dad, three teenage kids - in the high heat of a summer's afternoon taking their dinghy out onto a part of Bassenthwaite Lake which has been designated a 'no boating area' for conservation reasons I'll get worked up about it and I might even have a go. They won't understand. The father will get shirty and tell me to sling my proverbial; but I'll be adamant. It will cause a scene because they will maintain it's for the kids and that they are all doing no harm.

Well perhaps not. Perhaps.

But what if they are disturbing a nest site close by, or a particular breed of freshwater fish that warms itself in that spot at this time of year or, most likely of all, their feet as they paddle back or splash each other damage algae growing beneath the surface which hasn't had a chance to re-establish itself after years of just this sort of activity and is being brushed away from its rocky bed?

You see I'm a killjoy because someone has to be. Because there's no room left for partying at the planet's expense. We've destroyed the buffer, the comfort zone of 'allowable' damage. Yet we carry on as if any destruction to the ecology of a place is someone else's responsibility; and if questioned about it claim innocence through some non-existent moral high ground.

Being a killjoy means taking responsibility for other people's actions as well - like picking up their litter after they've had their picnic and left the rocky shore looking like their living room presumably. What I mean is would they live like that at home?

So I get angry and I mouth off. But, you see, it is important. We have no room left to blame others. We are all responsible now.

Three species of moth, including the dusk thorn and the hedge rustic, once common in the UK, have been discovered as now being close to extinction. Their numbers reduced by more than 90% in the last 35 years. Reasons for their decline include the oft cited and most obvious destruction of habitat, climate change and light pollution from street lights and from houses in the ever-encroaching settlements of the population. These moths have decreased their breeding because it never actually becomes night as they know it anymore, it's never dark enough. So the right conditions for some good moth loving never occur - result: no baby moths. No moth population. No moth dinner for, let's say, nightjars or bats. No nightjars or bats.

And that is kind of my point for having a go. Something, some creature, some habitat, is now constantly being affected by all that we do - and being on holiday does not mean responsibility ends. Tourism, as we are discovering, is responsible for a major contribution to greenhouse gasses, for Everest turning into the highest altitude refuse dump in the world (some claim to fame!). Not for nothing does it also have the moniker 'the tourist industry'. Time I think for a different revolution.

Cumbria 16/7/06

Wildlife

Red Squirrel - 1 (Whinfell)
Oystercatcher - 4 Heron - 5
Kestrel - 2 Buzzard - 1
Cormorant - 4 Red Kite -1 (Didcot)

Cumbria - Hampshire 9/7/06

Thoughts on Dissolution

Why do I go quiet on walks and often find I am unable or unwilling to enter into conversation? Why am I drawn constantly to moving out into the land, often distracted and unable to join others? I witnessed this in myself when I was in Suffolk, then in Winchester, and now of course here in Cumbria.

I think I can begin to answer this. I think it's time I tried, for myself and those closest to me at least.

Virginia Woolf and Henry David Thoreau were giants of solitude. They both found in it a way to move, even briefly, beyond themselves; toward what Buddhism calls 'unbeing'. Woolf could find it in even a simple stroll along a street provided she was alone; it gave her the opportunity to be removed for a while from her own psychological onrush, though in the end it was still the countryside that drew her to her final act of sacrifice. Thoreau sought for his 'unbeing' by living in the wilderness: watching, learning, noting, finding patterns and becoming part of the unfettered landscape of Massachusetts; for him it was as much a political necessity as a spiritual one. But they were both seeking anonymity from others and, more importantly, themselves; dissolution - temporary loss of self.

I believe this is what I've been experiencing recently; and that's not to set myself up alongside those two literary greats, by any means. I like to think of this drive, this need for dissolution in myself as both a form of meditation and an anti-social way of being (if our society's current trends are anything to go by I'm happy to be called the latter, it's a revolutionary stance as far as I'm concerned). It is an important and arresting place to be; frightening as well, from time to time.

It is not something that many people might ideally look for - loss of the self, dissolving one's sense of 'me'. Perhaps the closest anyone comes to that feeling today is whilst travelling abroad, in a foreign country - or the most remote parts of Britain. But even then it is difficult to achieve anything as thorough in our cluttered century as the two exponents from another age I cite above. After all travelling is pre-packed and often merely home from home these days; and how many really remote parts of Britain are left? In any case, who but the daring few are prepared to take the time and trouble to enter into them and receive their quiet riches?

But there are glimpses of hope and they are, I believe, necessary to my survival - if not anyone else's. What is excellent about this preoccupation with loss is that I have to be active in achieving it; willing to listen much closer to the primal self than we are used to doing, hiding out as we do amid the constant techno-chatter of our modern age and all the by-products it creates on our busy nervous systems. And all too often we are silently acknowledging our fear of being alone and running away from it when it is in fact the one place that we should go to ease fear and find strength. Two words: time and patience. We have forgotten their meaning. The first we perpetually act like we want to conquer and subsume, to bend to our will. The second we (in the western world at least) know very little of and appear to have on the whole forgotten as we replace it with products and inventions that claim to make life easier but in turn destroy our patience (and alongside it, our imaginations). As a child I was often taught the benefits of patience: 'Patience is a virtue' the old adage said, yet we bring children up in a world that has less and less of the stuff and which we are no longer practiced in enough to pass on. These two states (time and patience) which we often deny in our sagacity are mutually beneficial to both each other and to us; symbiotic. We ignore them at our loss. We lose them through ignorance.

None of this is less than obvious. But the warnings are not heeded. We are not immortal, yet we act so, consuming time like fast food, without thought to its precious possibilities; heading for a permanent physical dissolution in our belief we are greater than nature, a more potent and unworthy loss than any metaphysical one I propose is of benefit. You see, if I do not take time to know myself as an individual, in relationship to my environment and the natural world, to understand my spirit as removed from another then I remain ignorant and I pass that ignorance on and vice versa. This is a destructive loop and it is now how we as a society choose to live. Worst of all it is promoted through passivity - via entertainment which exploits our very desire not to face our fears and our responsibilities, not to listen to the solo internal voice, to check in with ourselves. Indeed it often promotes living our lives through other people's lives - witness Big Brother and the countless reality TV shows. They are excuses for people not to take responsibility for their own well-being and thereby the well-being of their environment and their world.

If I believe I know it 'all' already, that I can just sit back and relax, what is the point of my existence? I might as well kill myself and have done with it. At least that way I would enter into the huge mystery of death, that awesome 'unbeing' of which I can know nothing about in life (perhaps this is the conclusion Virginia Woolf came to beside that river, with the rocks in her pockets?). Yet if I live as though I know nothing and the world is here to teach me and I am willing to be shown, then I live always on the cusp of potential. Nothing is ever an anti-climax; it might be difficult at times trying to find a way through, but in the end hope will offer me the chance to learn. My entertainment is my own to find. This is the state I have found myself entering into when I decide to walk the 'wilderness' - life becomes rich with awe and wonder, something is always just around the corner and it is often not what I expect. For example, have you ever seen three herons grouped together basking for fish in the shallows of a lake at dusk? I have never seen more than a solitary heron at any one time, usually trying to hide form the world and secrete itself somewhere, let alone three in mutual territory and companionship.

Solitude allows me to think, to be awake. The rest of the time I find I blunder and am often misdirected by myself and others.

Do not live to please your sponsors. Be revolutionary - seek joy in the simple act of learning or the unexpected. The natural world is never less than passionate or inspiring. It denies routine. It offers a different understanding of time. The contribution a simple walk can make to one's appreciation of this cannot be underestimated - the quietening of the super-ego for a while. We are small in comparison to our potential and our world; only very few seem to be keen to strive to gain that potential or even come close to it. The natural world is our biggest clue to helping ourselves.

Everybody needs to wander somehow, sometime, and to get lost - by oneself. To be scared in either a real or metaphorical wilderness. This is not rocket science, or even a radical new idea. But I think it is surprising how little courage we have to make the simple (literal) steps necessary.


Cumbria 7/7/06

Some 'sources':
Where I Lived, And What I Lived For - Henry David Thoreau (Penguin)
A Field Guide To Getting Lost - Rebecca Solnit (Cannongate)

My Back Pages

Why is it that we often give more value to what we consider to be rare than that which is commonplace? What constitutes 'rare' in any case?

I think today, my birthday, is a good day to think about these questions.

So -

Here I am, one year older, and I'm raking and turning over the old earth in the overgrown corner of a huge garden in Cumbria - fine maples and yews cover the ground with pools of necessary shade, the temperature hitting 82 degrees today - flies and bugs rise in spinning patterns, criss-crossing the air, caught in the sunlight; earthworms and other invertebrates are exposed. It is not an easy thing to have done; I feel like I am become a destroyer even as I provide a larder for others. A robin flies in and rests on the low branch of the nearby hawthorn tree - young, vibrant, wide-eyed - he bobs and dips in correspondence with the easy efforts he is making to catch some of the insects I've disturbed. And he has no fear now he knows there is an easy supply - resting on the handle of my spade or on the tip of the wheelbarrow, coming in, checking my position, aware of any sudden move I make. I watch him closely. He brings a gladness to my day; an unexpected present. I start to make odd whistling noises to him whenever I catch him, sucking on my lips and through my teeth to make them whine gently and I believe he listens, tipping his head side to side with each noise, frozen, staring at me, perhaps trying to work out what this numb-nuts human being is playing at.

Absolute stillness in the high heat at mid-day. An opportunity to sit low to the earth, back resting against a bole of a fir and to witness what may come - either within or without. I have been given that privilege recently.

A commotion before me, almost touching my feet - a shuffling of the drier grass cut a week or so before; something frenetic, charged, a seeker, rapid and very timid. Turns out to be a shrew; a tiny, fleshy thing - no bigger than my thumb and covered in fine, downy fur that glistens in the sunlight - inching forward a step then retreating. A surprise to be so close; as if I've been let in, ignored, joyously invisible. Here, bitten as I am by gnats, scarred by thick, rampant brambles - forearms covered in red wealds, sore and irritated - the shrew peers out of its burrow, it waits fretting, inches from me. I dare not move; I suspect it is already picking up the vibrations of my breathing and with a snappy lifting of its head in my direction it scuttles away beneath surface growth and leaf matter.

Both the robin and the shrew are common creatures; two of the commonest in Britain. Years ago many of our rarest birds and animals were commonplace - Harriers and other birds of prey, persecuted almost out of existence by farmers and farming methods; the corncrake; the red squirrel; and even the sparrow is now fast becoming a rare bird. Was it so commonplace we got bored, took our eyes off it for a while and now look what has happened?

Don't get me wrong - I love, for example, to watch a pair of Osprey in a habitat where they have been reintroduced and are now breeding successfully as much as anyone; or perhaps a Soldier Orchid or even an otter. But I believe there is a fine line between what is rare and what is 'commonplace'. We cannot take our eye off the ball for a minute, not now we are entering the potentially apocalyptic phase of the earth's natural history. To my mind nothing in nature is commonplace, it is all extraordinary. Conservation awareness and the appreciation of biodiversity are constants we take upon ourselves; and where possible it is up to the 'little man' to do the ground work (if you'll pardon the pun) for the more 'common' species and let the big boys (the conservation groups, the lobbyists etc) with the relative resources do what they have to do to ensure the safety of those creatures that are currently recognised as 'rare'.

What I would suggest is rare in this case was the opportunity I was given to be in the presence of two beautiful creatures at such close proximity. It requires a certain leaning toward stillness, observation and patience all of which traits are rarities these days. That and a willingness to be moved and enthralled by what we might see everyday in close proximity to our everyday lives. Only this way can there be the hope that the notion of something becoming rare (or even extinct) is in itself a rarity.

A sad footnote:

In The Guardian today it is reported that a £1000 reward has been offered by the RSPB for information regarding the killing of a female peregrine falcon in the Peak District where police, wildlife groups and landowners have been working to protect a small colony of nesting birds. The female was found and discovered to have been hit twice by shotgun pellets.

Cumbria - 6/7/06