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Visiting the oldies

Writer's picture: CroneCrone

I went to see the King Oak and ended up visiting the Queen Ash, finding two other ancient oaks and two badger setts!


King Oak, AKA Grandfather, says it's time to wake up. He said the weave is thinning and we all need to work to make it thick again.


Queen Ash has seen her remnant trunk collapse.


The first of the new trees told me that love in not a feeling, it is being in connection: it's the beingness of relationship; part of the mesh and entanglement. Love, he said, isn't what we think or feel, it's the things we do to strengthen the community of earth-beings. He said, when you're falling off a precipice, it's not about changing minds and thoughts, it's about trying to land safely and soften the fall of others. He said, "I doubt you'll get the chance to return." Which was not hugely reassuring.


A watched a pair of buzzards, saw a few muntjacs, fell over in the mud and enjoyed myself greatly.



More and more I think not of threatened or traumatised individuals and species but of threatened communities and places. These woods with no understory or ground flora. This sums it up. The man Mosu is in Romania:


Mosu’s beat was about 13,000 hectares of state forest, encompassing three valleys with steep wooded sides as well as a few small farms by the rivers. Ten kilometres away, in a broad fertile valley, were towns and villages, while Brasov, a city of 250,000 people, was only 30 kilometres distant. As we sat and watched the night creep in, we talked of nature. Christoph translated for Mosu and for me. Mosu knew exactly what was in his forest: there were 105 red deer, 120 roe deer, 160–80 wild boar and 43 brown bears, as well as six lynx and two packs of wolves, totalling five to seven animals in each pack. We had spent several days tracking some of them in the deep snow, but had seen only two red deer and one bear in daytime. Mosu was curious about Scotland and found it difficult to believe me when I said a similar-sized area in the Scottish Highlands might hold 2,000 red deer and 400 roe deer. I said that we had killed all our bears, wolves, wild boar and lynx centuries ago and that all were extinct. I tried to explain about overgrazing by red deer and the lack of tree regeneration, but I’m not sure he understood, because his woods showed excellent regeneration… - Restoring the Wild: True Stories of Rewilding Britain’s Skies, Woods and Waterways: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways by Roy Dennis.

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1 commentaire


maplekey4
04 févr.

Good post about love and community. Quote from Roy Dennis book is startling. Thanks for taking me along on the walk -- good video.

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