online: 26 april 2010 modified: 24, 25, 26 april 2010 24 april 2010 conscious evolution
first of summer
...glad to be back among the tallest beeches... beneath which a small tree with white flowers is in blossom... this warm afternoon perhaps the first of summer... air temperature is 20 degrees Celsius... 23 is forecast for tomorrow... the danger of volcanic ash seems to have vanished as suddenly as it began... the sky is full of aircraft...
...the angle of the second hand of my watch sets me walking south west through the forest where i hear (but cannot see) a bird pecking or drilling into the bark of a beech tree... then a child's shout... and the sight of a girl of about ten jogging like an adult... but slowly (to keep pace with a woman who is walking)...
i pass a white handkerchief on the ground and seek another seat where i can write these words..
...i feel the sun on my back and reverse my peaked cap to keep my neck in shadow (i've been avoiding sunshine since 1979 when mild skin cancer began long after childhood exposure on the coastline of Wales)... there's a wood pigeon cooing above and another in the distance... and the sounds of aircraft every few minutes... a white butterfly passes and there are several pigeons perching on, and flying between, the topmost branches...
...now the second hand directs me to walk approximately south east through the undergrowth of tree seedlings grown to a few metres and with many dead branches... some of which i snap off as i twist and bend to find a way between and beneath them...
...i'm sitting now in shadows and can feel cool air which is moving too slowly to be called wind or even breeze... and now another bird is tapping a tree trunk:
...now i'm alone in this part of the forest... alone with the trees and at a distance from the many millions of people who are outside this piece of semi-wilderness... and away from thoughts of indoor life... and work... and conversation... and survival... or whatever else it is that fills each daily moment...
...the battery charge has already dropped to 45 percent so i decide to stop writing and to continue walking...
...a red squirrel... with longer ears and darker fur than those i remember seeing in the thirties or forties... and now another... i suppose they are being consciously reintroduced...
...landscape designing... i was passing an area of what was recently a lake full of water plants, half-hidden by trees and bushes... but it's now cleared... to give space for a new piece of lawn and for a connective view of mansion-lake-and-lawns as one entity... is it a good thing?... and is this the way to go (on our changing planet)... or does it call for something more far-seeing than the visual and botanical redesigning of landscape ... perhaps it calls for the conscious shaping of human geography... or even conscious evolution... (memories of J W von Goethe and of Faust: the second part of the tragedy... the audacity and range of eighteenth century thought is still present)
...suddenly i see a peacock... not in an enclosure but stepping freely in the forest... has it flown here?... (can they fly?*)... or has it been consciously introduced?...
...at which a pigeon alights outside the window before which i am editing these words... and a little later a small crow alights on the same spot... while a white butterfly and new leaves and flowers fill the garden...
for comfortable line length please set the window to about half of the screen width
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial
purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you
respect the copyright of quotations.
If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please
send a copyright permission request to jcj 'at' publicwriting.net
(replace 'at' and spaces by the @ sign)
