I started posting on Substack a couple of years ago, when the melancholy of lockdown made it impossible for me to distract myself from my growing despair about the damage being done to the natural world. It was clear that all the wildlife was disappearing; as a boy naturalist I had taken a keen interest, and I still have the old notebooks listing the birds I saw and the nests I found, but now when I walked out there was little to see but crows and blackbirds, and the odd pigeon. Most of the people in the first village I can remember worked near to their homes in the countryside, and although our forebears had worked hard to eliminate all the creatures labelled vermin, it was still a countryside where grass-snakes and hedgehogs were commonplace, where the summers brought swallows and swifts and cuckoos in their millions. There were turtle doves in the hedgerows, and curlews, larks and peewits in the fields. It was, in short, still the English countryside that we had loved for hundreds of years, tamed and domesticated as it was. It was not a wilderness; even the wild places were really man made deserts, but we had grown to love it and it seemed stable. There were still poppies in the cornfields, and wildflower meadows full of the buzz of insects. It was a lovely place to live.
Driving over Wenlock Edge, Wheathill and then taking the back lanes home, I was struck by my usual dilemma. I saw such beauty in the ermine clad hills, the pines chevron of snow, while knowing that the lapwings and fieldfares were gone.
We are going to "the big one" in London on April 21st, a protest against the damage done by Big Business to our World. I hold little hope that it will achieve anything, but at least we can register our feelings. .I admire your tireless work to educate people and will continue to read your excellent work
You are so right about the shifting baseline. It is so very difficult to fight and be heard and understood. Thank you for making me think and consider what I can do.
The Fight of our Lives
Driving over Wenlock Edge, Wheathill and then taking the back lanes home, I was struck by my usual dilemma. I saw such beauty in the ermine clad hills, the pines chevron of snow, while knowing that the lapwings and fieldfares were gone.
We are going to "the big one" in London on April 21st, a protest against the damage done by Big Business to our World. I hold little hope that it will achieve anything, but at least we can register our feelings. .I admire your tireless work to educate people and will continue to read your excellent work
You are so right about the shifting baseline. It is so very difficult to fight and be heard and understood. Thank you for making me think and consider what I can do.