While I was at the Reserve today, checking trees, there was a shoot going on across the valley. It was so loud. The sheer violence of the sound resounding. The pigeons were all flocking and swarming. No respite at night either - between Diwali and Guy Fawkes night (when I am writing this) it's been detonation after detonation. The horrendousness. I used to love fireworks - I remember being swept away by them on the night of Silverstone's 50th Anniversary. But now I think of the animals. The glittering tinkle of long-tailed tits is far far better than the sound and sparkle of fireworks.
I found two trees to climb while I was wandering around. Both just so generously branched.It's great to feel yourself taken up into a tree as though you had no choice in the matter.
At this point, I'd already glimpsed a departing hare and then I came across three muntjacs. One, a very chilled out male with just one horn, had the most beautiful markings on his face. I was glad that I didn't startle them too much.
I sat on a tree with a tuffet for my soup and coffee.

While I was there, I had this thought: for animals, the idea is that which they do. So then, I wondered if there is a decision process, like, how I think, "I could sit here for my lunch or walk back to those three young oaks" - when I decide between two ideas. The tree said, "Your thinking is limited as you assume that the decision comes after the mental articulation of the ideas. Actually, at that point, the action is decided and you just waste time and energy seeming to think. The bird manifests that which has been decided without going through this second, redundant, process." I seem to recall that this is effectively what the writers were arguing in that book I read about reason.... ah yes: The Enigma of Reason by Hugh Mercier and Dan Sperber.
I watched a wren manifesting her ideas; and considered how trees had manifested theirs. I listened to the ideas of robins and tits, chaffinches and black headed gulls. My idea was to sit still and pay attention.
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