View from Minerva

That's the image on the cover page. I sat in her boughs and had an... interesting message:

Of course your life does not matter! No one's life matters in any abstract, generalised, universal way! Beings only matter in concrete ways. Your life matters to those with whom you have contact. Just the same as everyone else. That is the same for everyone. The ripples go further than you know - for good and ill. But, in the terms of which you speak: does my life matter? Be consoled, you are always already irrelevant on the abstract level and always already important on the concrete level. And it's up to you whether the balance tips more for good or for ill.

So.

As I was walking along, I noticed that where some conifers were cut and their remaining brethren are dying, the broadleaf trees who had patiently grown beneath their shade, are now getting light. Twenty, maybe thirty years of waiting...

And on the subject of slow growth, the multispecies miracle of lichen.

I knew about the deer "management" plans - and that now has ramped up a level, with a high chair for the shooters.

Clare and I sat in another part of the reserve that same night and heard shots, saw a man with a gun prowling the edge of the woodland, heard muntjacs barking their warning... and saw no animals at all.

Not until we were driving home and were stopped as someone moved out of the road a deer killed by a car.