“Nature mediates. I am eased, as ever, by the simple act of stepping out, of walking and seeing, observing all before me. Beside the Field Oak, I watch the interplay of birds and tree — the emergent leaf now a lemon-coloured coating above me — and realise with a certain sadness how the human is always outside that interplay, that mesh of life. Was there a time in some ancient prehistoric world when the creatures did not flee before us, the birds did not fly from the branches of the oak as we approached? Was there a time when humans did not strike fear and alarm into the natural world around them?
“We are of nature. Yet we see ourselves as separate....
“I strive to spend all the hours I can in the company of oaks, and yearn for some transference of those qualities until I may hold something of their essence, their character, too.”
