Storm light

This was a day of rain showers interspersed with the bright, clean light of gaps between clouds.

I went to visit Sentinel Trees - there are six whom I monitor on this side of the Reserve. And I sat with the Minerva Oak.

It was peaceful, a time for me to relax between the storms of anxiety and depression I am experiencing.

While I was up in the tree, I saw a buzzard land at the same level, well, surely rather higher, on the dead branch of a Scot's pine on the other side of the track. He landed with his wings still slightly open, as though protecting a kill. Then he turned. He had such a white front that I thought it could not be a buzzard, but, I am told, a buzzard can have a very white front. His wings were dark, the darkest shimmering brown. I could see the outline of the hooked bill and the all-seeing eye, which saw me and he left.

Now, I say buzzard, because I spoke to birder Neil just after I saw the bird. But it could, just could, have been an osprey.

That was my thrill for the day.

Minerva said that wisdom lies in knowing what to seek knowledge about; so you do some knowledge gathering; and knowledge is critical (you have to know what is poisonous, for example): then it takes wisdom to know what to do about the knowledge you have.

Wisdom is the direction, the compass: the what matters rather than the what... but, she added, the what matters too.

She said, think of convolution rather than evolution. Coiling not straight lines.

Every stem and branch and twig is an experiment in living. Life is experimental, at fractal time and size scales.

A rich habitat with many species is a library of knowledge embodied and enacted, at every level and yet still always experimental.