Dear friend,
I find myself in a perpetual state of anxiety, guilt and with feelings of powerlessness as a human being who has produced offspring in the epicentre of the Climate Emergency.
Below is a description of how my desire to be part of a thriving natural world is often starkly juxtaposed with realising the damage of ones very own existence.
I have no answers – all I can do at this very moment is to share my words with you.
The Trespasser:
Today we drew up upon a road full of character and majesty. We had already begun a day of slapdash-adventure, following an urge of childish mystery. Now this looked like a road to nowhere. The road effortlessly lured us in, the centre of it was green with a thick velvet furrow, giving an impression of pomp and ceremony – I suspect like the impact of wearing fur in the old days. The velvet furrow stroked the underbelly of our car as we drove along. The wheels clung to the thin, seemingly insignificant black tarmac. Further down, the road began to narrow with yet more lavish, sporadic verges and foliage. It enveloped the tarmac and performed optical like illusions for one to delight in – forcing the road narrower, narrower and smaller still, until one felt as though we might have entered Alice’s Wonderland – quite by chance.
The sculptural bramble hedges gave a rather claustrophobic air to our adventure. One spotted hundreds of wild berries, jewel like and sparkling in the sun. There were scatterings of regal greens, blood reds and dark blues, poised between each thorn and leaf. Every blackberry puckered its flesh, as though each one were a forlorn maiden in summer’s heat, waiting for the cool of dusk to finally elope that evening. They were altogether too perfect – one could have
mistook them to have been exquisitely blown from glass – it almost put one off from plucking them and demolishing a number of them in one’s mouth.
The tight, yet elegant bends of the rural road slowed the engine of the car to that of a canter, still bound to experience the unknown. The road steered our vessel in a snake like gesture, widening
slightly in width and all the while the grass caressing the underbelly of the engine. We fell further into the stomach of the small, meadow-covered valley.
Like all good adventures, this one maintained ones feeling of suspense. My partner and I were like two gullible fish following bate, until, the road gave way to an opening. The sultry, lazy, sea lay before us, she was radiant and vast – no doubting that she was the Queen of all water.
The sea was lulling her surf rhythmically to her own sounds; occasionally small waves were roused by the calls of the Oyster Catchers whom had collected on her shores. A silent yet controlling moon loitered in the sunlit sky. It had pinned back her tide as though it was her hair, exposing the sea’s evanescent silky beach.
Finally, we were out of the car, one hungrily wanted to see more, a human desire tingled within – one wanted to be on it, the sand had to be beneath ones naked feet. One made striding steps towards the beach, impatiently drawing closer and closer. Upon arrival one marked the previously untouched sand with the stamp of a foot. Looking ahead, it dawned on one that the cove before one’s eyes was lucidly stunning and beguiling all at once. It felt as though one had found the last
organ of true wilderness – A ‘virgin’ earth.
And upon this virginal, prehistoric enlightenment one became unnerved. One realised the canker of one’s very being, no longer adventuring, but trespassing on nature’s pelt – crushing it with one’s hungry, human feet.
Many Thanks to Adi Lawford and Jessie Dixon sharing the pictures from our recent trip to the West of Wales.