New walks and momentous moments

I wanted to avoid getting bogged down after a lot of recent rain, so I decided to venture out to Spectacle Lane. This is the Spectacle.

Not much to report on the walk itself, but on the way there I saw a badger in the road.

I stopped and went to see if he was alive or dead. The breeze on his deep fur made me think he was breathing. But the angle of his neck suggested he was very very dead. I knew I should move the body off the road. I had no gloves. I reached down and grabbed hold. The body resisted my tug, but more worryingly he felt warm. I let go and stood there. Was he alive? I bent and touched the strangely soft and padded paw. The leg, though, was stiff.

Cars passed. The drivers looking at me as though I were the badger killer. I wanted to go. But then this beautiful creature would be hit again and again.... a sort of sacrilege. Also I had told the Badger Trust that I would move him - and if I didn't, someone else would have to come out. So I bent down and lifted. He was not that heavy (he's my brother).

He died, was killed, near a mammal path. I followed it and twenty yards from the body, I saw the sett.

He died just seconds from home.

A few days later, I tried a different track. Heard the strange sounds of a rook and saw how ivy is such a boon for invertebrates late in the year.

And I had three momentous moments. There were some lovely oaks and I stood by one - the one with the stag's head - that seemed to have been struck by lightning.

I asked permission and the tree said, in my mind, "Love is all you need to always be welcome."

So, I'm there, trying to relate and experience. I heard a sound behind me... a cat. Then another sound... a woman with a dog.

So I related with her. She said the tree was indeed struck by lightning. She said there was a badger sett nearby and a few years back she found a nearly dead baby badger down there. She thought the cub was evicted because he or she was ill. I liked talking to her, feeling her sense of knowing the place... connection.

She told me I could circle back a different way and I followed her advice.

At the top of the hill I was looking out over the fields as an old tractor scared a small flock of gulls into flight. In front of me and high above they circled, spiraled, flashing white and grey against the blue of the sky. The circle... a halo... were the riding the currents upwards? Were they gathering? Were they just enjoying? Were they creating an aerial art installation above?

Watching, I was entranced, utterly. So much so that the approaching helicopter was outside of my awareness until the gulls span off their circle and flew north-east.

The helicopter.

Whirly-bird, I thought. And then I thought how the whirly-bird stopped whirling of the birds.

I felt struck, somehow. As though that mattered.

Again this strange feeling that everything is significant.

I walked on and found an old and healthy-looking ash. There was a branch I thought I could climb from the far side. But no. It was too high. So I stood.

I leaned into the tree. Again, I was seeking that relationship... the "emergent third"... what arises when two beings meet... I held fast, asking, "What even is the emergent third?" And, in the quiet broken only by distant cars and a calling kite, a robin started to sing in the hedge next to me.

This is it. The moment of meeting is it. There is no magic, no mystery. You open, you connect, and that is it, the birth of something new is just that: attend with love and life is a flower opening.