online: 15/06/2014
modified: 14 june 2014
10 june 2014 tuesday evening
human ecology of George Stapledon
...blackberries already in blossom... wind gathering and every leaf is in motion... patches of pale green grass seeking what light comes through the treetops... the forest ground is growing more moss than grass...
...i'm reminded of George Stapledon's one-person survey of hill farming and ecology of Wales 100 years ago (my randomly selected reading of the last few days)...
selected fragments from the biography by Robert Waller, Prophet of the New Age, The Life and Thought of Sir George Stapledon F.R.S., Faber and Faber, London 1962.:
...Soil without vegetation is a poor fragile thing almost wholly at the mercy of the elements. Unite it with vegetation and the two together become dynamic, capable of self-inspired growth and self-protection ...the soil reacting on the flora and the flora to the soil... p60
The arbitrary distinction between pure and applied science had better be dropped. p63
...an old hill farmer who was a practicing agronomist... I shall never forget that mellow and serene old gentleman: he would have been perfectly at ease in any society ... Everything he said struck one as being considered, but spontaneous, natural and effortless... p64
...the dominant grass - again not sown - was Agrostis, the sown grasses had largely died out... it is the pivot of the see-saw between natural and artificial... or else the herbage relapses into the equilibrium that suits nature's needs but not ours... p65
...while writing this i hear most sustained and clear music from a thrush (or is it a blackbird?... i can't see it in the leaves and branches overhead from where the sound is coming)...
...it continues for several minutes... but more slowly now... and quieter... each note of bird music is clearly articulated from others... and no other bird seems to respond... i guess that this is a rare performance (for its length and clarity)...
...quieter now as the source of sound has moved further away and to the west...but i remain recording the thoughts it provokes... as my fingers now attempt to imitate the sound:
ps ps ps ps... short silence... ch ch ch ch ch ch prr prr prr
swe swe swe swe
this is hopeless... it's too quick for me to catch in one-finger typing...
...a man with a plastic bag stops to talk... i mention the bird (which is still singing after about 20 minutes)... he doesn't think it's a blackbird... and suggests it might have migrated here for the summer... he says he hears another bird responding... but i don't hear the higher notes)...
...and now the song has stopped and the sounds of distant trains and cars and aircraft take my attention...
...walking along a dry and winding path between high gorse and bramble... and beneath the solitary moon... trapped in the earth's gravitation... as the earth is in the sun's....
then a brief look at city in mist... from highest seat (now occupied by someone else)...
...a constant stream of cars drives close to my legs as i sit to write this paragraph at a bus stop... trusting completely that each driver of this stream of lethal vehicles will follow the one ahead... part of the voluntary ethic of our half-wise-half-crazy culture... a sanity in our motoring madness...?
i was born in a house close to the fields of experimental grasses and clovers at the plant breeding station directed by George Stapledon... on the hills near Aberystwyth... my father spoke of him as he did of people like Gandhi or Nansen... and he occasionally invited post-graduate students who'd come from India to study at the Plant Breeding Station for sunday afternoon tea... i remember one gave us an inlayed picture of the Taj Mahal...
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