Category Archives: country life

Ecology and Nature Mysticism

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Growing up in the countryside gave me a different perspective on life. Life around me changed with the seasons. As a child I was aware of the change with the seasons, but the reason for that change remained largely inexplicable. In spring I eagerly waited for the first signs of change in nature. The solitary snowdrop hiding under a tree, the bursting into bloom of the ma and the appearance of hazel nuts on the trees, each indicating the onset of a different season. Although I knew at an early age this was due to changes in the position of the sun, the process of change in nature still seemed a mysterious process. Primary school science was not sufficient to explain the changes in the moods of nature. None of the adults I knew could explain the sudden changes in the weather, why did a bright summer’s day suddenly darken with storm clouds which would erupt into a sudden downpour. An uncontrollable force which could disrupt people’s lives. The eruption of the storm would instantly change people’s lives. In a fierce thunderstorm people would take cover, as the fierce rain made work impossible. Storms demonstrated not only the power of nature and the insignificance of man, but also its mystery. How did the cows know long in advance that a storm was coming? Hours before it arrived they would sit down in a group, nobody could explain to me how the cows knew or why they sat in a group? Was it some primeval instinct that was necessary for the survival of the primeval wild cattle that roamed the land. Living the country you learned to accept the mystery and power of nature, us dwarfish beings had no choice to the live and work according to the rhythms of nature.

Our village church steeped in human history as it was, also gave testament to the power and majesty of nature. The purpose of the steeple I was told was to show distant travellers that there was human habitation here, a civilised Christian place, were shelter could be found in a storm. At the entrance to the church, at the lych gate were two ancient yews. Planted we were told to provide yew for the English bows, used by the archers at Agincourt and the other battles of the Hundred Years War. In fact this was a lie, concealing there real purpose, a purpose dating back to pre-Christian times. Now thought to either provide protection against evil spirits, or more likely due to their great age, seen to provide a link to the underworld and the Gods thereof. Just their survival and purpose added to the mystery, as when planted these yew trees would have served little practical purpose, as their berries were poisonous to livestock.

Rather than being frightened I grew to love the power and magic of nature. I loved being out in storms witnessing their power. How trees bent, swayed and buckled beneath the wind. Being careful to avoid elms, as they were notorious for shedding their branches without warning. Even in good weather countrymen were wary of elms, often keeping a safe distance from them.

Heraclitus to me sums up the essence of nature, when he said that ‘nature loves to hide’. Nature or the essence that is nature hides in plain sight. I know yet don’t know nature. To the Greeks nature was a Goddess Isis, who hid behind her veil. This was how I experienced nature, I could see the changes taking place, trees getting leaves in spring and shedding them in autumn, yet feeling that I did not really understand what was happening. Possibly I have too much of the country mans’ acceptance of what is, knowing that I cannot change it. Although I have an understanding of biology, quantum physics, chemistry, I cannot shake to the belief that these come together in a something that is both unknowable and knowable. What I have to admit to a knowledge of a thing that I cannot express in the language of ordinary or scientific discourse. Poetry with its ability to give a sense of what lies behind the words is perhaps better suited for this task.

Goethe expressed this sentiment far better. When he wrote “A.Humboldt sent me the translation of his Essay on the Geography of Plants with a flattering illustration that implies Poetry, too might lift the veil of Nature.” What he was referring to was an illustration in the book of the God Apollo unveiling the Goddess of Nature at whose feet lay a copy of Goethe’s book ‘The metamorphosis of Plants’.

What I believe is that there are many valid modes of understanding. Jaspers and Benjamin expressed this in similar but different ways. Jaspers said there are many ways to the truth. He was thinking of the stories, parables and myths of Christianity that can express the truths of that religion in a manner that is impossible through the use of reason and rational discourse. When writing of the task of the translator, Benjamin said there was but one universal language, but one that could be expressed in different senses according to which spoken language was used. He gives the following example the French call bread pan and the Germans call it brod. They are both describing the same thing, but subtle differences in what they mean when they use the respective terms. Can not my nature mysticism and biological discourse be equally valid, are not the both expressing equally valid senses of what is understood as nature? What is being described, explained or understood are two different sensory experiences that need not be contradictory. Does not ecology suggest a reconciliation of the two experiences. Ecologists have a sound scientific understanding of nature, yet they also experience a sense of the wholeness of nature. A natural order that they wish to preserve through application of their scientific knowledge to prevent the catastrophe that the anthropocene threatens. A threat that can be simply illustrated in the words of my father a former old countryman. He said looking at a field full of cattle, does not the farmer realise that there are too many cows in that field and that many cows will destroy the drainage system and turn the field into a muddy mess. He was right the industrial farmer inflicted irrevocable damage on that field significantly reducing its value as pastureland.

Unashamedly a ‘Citizen of Nowhere’

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Although it was intended as an insult, directed by the Prime Minister at such as people such as myself that wished to remain a European citizen, it is a title I am proud to claim. Perhaps an example from my life explains what I mean. At the age of eighteen I left my country home to study at a University in London. I left behind what many would regard as an idyllic life. Our family’s life moved to a rhythm dictated by the seasons. Winter meant a slowing down, the time when nature itself entered a dormant stage. Although his work never became dormant it was by January reduced to what were a series of maintenance tasks. Then with the coming of spring when nature began to revive, he became more active in his working life. This was the breeding season, when hatched pheasant chicks from eggs in the incubator, to be followed by transferring the thousands of young chicks to small secure nurturing pens. Then when summer reached its peak he worked from dawn to dusk, transferring and settling colonies of pheasant chicks in the surrounding woodland. Although it was a hard life working as a gamekeeper he loved it. Having rejected the alternative of an easier life in the city. When asked why he did not want an easier life in the city, he said that he could tolerate the noise of the city. This digression is necessary to explain why it was a wrench for me to leave country life behind. I should add that all my childhood friends remained attached to the countryside. Consequently I became distant and estranged from them to such an extent that I now find it difficult to recall there names and facial features.

When surrounded by and living amongst people who loved the country life, why did I leave? The reason for me was it was a matter of growing into maturity, I felt that to remain I would be trapped in an eternal adolescence, a sense of ‘not-grown-upness’. I had grown out of the country life. Today when my wife suggests how nice it would be to retire to a country cottage, my reaction is panic. What country life represents for me is a closing in of the intellectual horizon. A panic akin to claustrophobia, a fear of losing that sense of freedom which I treasure.

Perhaps my schooling accounted to my sense of an intellectual claustrophobia. I studied at a country secondary modern. A school in which the boys were expected to become farm labourers, factory hands or members of the armed forces . The girls typists or clerical assistants. Our education virtually ceased at fourteen, as at that age we had learn all that was needed to perform our expected future roles. What I developed was a sense of frustration, I knew that there was much more to learn, which I was being denied. Some of our teachers recognised our frustration, and by the time we reached the age of fifteen they offered us a chance to sit a new exam designed for secondary modern students. However even this was a source of frustration. The science textbook we used was the science of the 1930s. Obviously it was a reprint, but it ignored all the scientific developments that had taken place since 1945. What I can remember is that it state the space that made up most of the universe was the ether. I term I think that dated back to Isaac Newton’s time.

Although I loved the country life, I wanted more the escape from its narrow confining intellectual horizons. A rooted life, a sense of belonging for me was the surrender of my individuality. Going trout fishing at first light was an experience I will always treasure. However even when fishing alone in the early morning in the most idyllic of surroundings could not dispel my uneasy sense of being trapped. I could not see myself endlessly repeating this experience. I needed something more.

Unlike Theresa May I value that sense of rootlessness that she abhors. It gives you a chance to remake your self. There is nothing that forces or pushes you into a particular role. Now although everybody knew that I was a gamekeepers son, it was only for them a matter of some interest or curiosity, it was not my defining characteristic. In the country being a gamekeepers son circumscribed your opportunities. You were expected to fulfil one of two roles, either follow in your fathers footsteps or become a farm labourer. The only escape was to become a factory hand in the nearby town.

The young people I met in London, were cut adrift from there roots. All were seizing the opportunity to remake there lives. Revelling in the freedom that being an unknown gave you. None wanted to go back. Patriotism of the form that Mrs May is advocating was something we scorned, it was old a drawing back to our childhoods. How could you be a British patriot of this sort and enjoy the music of Jimmi Hendricks or all the other American stars. We wanted to be citizens of nowhere adopting whatever identity suited us at that moment. Our clothes, our appearance and behaviours represented a rejection of the past. London for the young then was at the centre of the youth fashion industry. Clothes were not patriotic they were international.

Within the youth culture there was an ironic attitude towards the symbols of patriotism. A clothes shop was named Lord Kitchener’s Valet. The historical Lord Kitchener was an austere unliveable, although competent general of the early 20th century and Empire. A man who stopped his men from shooting the mortally wounded enemy after battle, on the grounds that bullets cost money, he advocated the cheaper option of killing them with the bayonet. Now the shop that bore his name mocked all that he stood for, it celebrated frivolity.

With rootless goes a sense of openness, you are open to and welcome new experiences. Michael Oakshott said that education was the initiation into new experiences. This initiation he imagined would be achieved through an intermediary, the teacher. However the citizen of nowhere is a self education, always seeking to initiate themselves into new experiences. With this freedom goes a sense of emptiness. There are times when you reach barriers or limits to your intellectual explorations. I can look back and recall reading Baudelaire’s prose poems. He like me could suffer a sense of ennui. One such poem that expressed my discontent was the one in which he describes the bleak view from his window of the rainswept Parisian rooftops.

Now there is a closing in of the horizons. New patriots that is our Brexit seeking politicians see us ‘citizens of nowhere’ as a threat to them. I think because we pose a threat to the easy certainties they cling too. Europe is a threat to them as it threatens there certainties. The cordon sanitaire

that protected there world of childish certainties has gone. Europe is now longer across the channel its here, its there neighbour. These new patriots don’t want change, they want it kept away from them. Rejecting Europe is an anguished cry of pain. Not only do they want to expel Europe from their country but they also want to suppress the fifth columnists such as myself that are a viper’s nest of ‘foreigness’ and strange ideas. I am abused as a member of the elite, my education they say has rendered me unfit to be a man of the people. I have lost what they see as my sense of Britishness. Strangely enough politicians who are Oxbridge graduates and members of the upper middle class, don’t suffer from this curse of ‘eliteness’.

Theresa the many of us ‘citizens of nowhere’ will continue to reject your notion of Britishness. We don’t want to retreat back into your comforting world of childish patriotic certainties. Unlike you we want to embrace the world out there. Fortress Britain is a chilling idea, a denial of that step forward that means embracing the uncertainty that is out there. The patriotism of yourself and your colleagues represents nothing more than the suffocating dullness of a familiar comfort blanket.

The Real Robin Hood

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Unlike most people I have met Robin Hood. Not the figment of the medieval imagination, but the real flesh and blood Robin Hood. When I met him he was a man in his fifties. A tall distinguished looking man with greying hair, with a ruddy complexion typical of many countrymen and whose eyes betrayed an obvious intelligence. Rather than being a romantic hero, he was more like the real medieval Robin, a villainous man who was hung for theft. He earned his name because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. However the poor he gave to was principally himself. It was said by those that knew him that he did not need to drive his car to the pub and the route from his house was so well worn that the ruts in the road would direct the car there.

I should explain how he earned the name Robin Hood. He was the gamekeeper on a large estate not far from my home. The estate was owned by a man who had been a war hero, a man who had founded one of the elite special units in the British army. However I doubt many elements of the wartime exploits of this man, as if he was so clever why was he constantly outsmarted by our local Robin Hood. When I read that this man was captured by the Germans on his first mission behind enemy lines, my suspicions were confirmed.

To understand how Robin Hood earned his name and reputation, I must first explain the nature of the gamekeeper’s job. The pheasant the preferred target for aristocracy on their organised shoots was not a native of Britain. I should one of the reasons for the pheasant being the preferred target, was not so much its flesh, as it’s poor flying skills. When alarmed the pheasant preferred to run away, so many times the unaware pheasant was caught by a pursuing fox. When the pheasant flew it choose a relatively low trajectory and flew in a straight line. Unlike other game birds it did not adopt that difficult trajectory that would make them hard to hit. The poor pheasant was a relatively easy target.

This bird not being a native of this country was relatively ill adapted to life here. If those pheasants that had been originally imported from the East were left to become naturalised, because of the ill adaptation to the natural environment there numbers would have remained small. Consequently keepers were employed to breed these birds in their thousands, so that the landed gentry would have plenty to shoot. The mortality rate for these birds was so high that even if a thousand poults were released into the woodland, only a few hundred would survive until the shooting season.

Therefore in spring the gamekeepers would trap the remaining birds and use them as breeding stock. What my father and other keepers did was catching these birds and was to put one cock pheasant into each breeding pen with a number of females and then collect the eggs these birds laid. Then when sufficient eggs had been laid, they would be put beneath a hen to hatch. The female pheasant was so ill adapted to a life in captivity that they made poor mothers. This was a slow a relatively inefficient way of breeding pheasants, so the hens were replaced by incubators. These incubators could accommodate a hundreds of eggs. When these pheasant chicks were born they were so ill equipped for a life in the wild, that they had at first to be placed in a warm pen heated by infra red lights to protect them from the cold. When they had matured sufficiently usually after four or five weeks, they were taken to a protective pen in the woods. This pen was surrounded by a high wire fence that would keep predators such the fox away from the vulnerable chicks. These chicks were so lacking in the skills for survival that they would actively court disaster. Sometimes when a fox prowled around the pen they would stick their heads out to see what was happening. What happened next was inevitable the poor chick would lose its head to the fox.

What the keeper feared most was rain. These chicks that were newly released into the wild would lack the feathers necessary to keep that warm in adverse conditions. Shelters were built within the pen to protect them from rain, yet lacking any natural instincts, they would fail to seek shelter when they first encountered rain. If it rained just after they had been released into the wild, many of these foolish birds would get a chill and die of the cold. Eventually these birds learnt survival instincts and could be released from the pen into the wild. However even when they had mattered some would be reluctant to leave the sheltered pen for the wild and had to be driven out of there find a home elsewhere.

There are to my knowledge no statistics available on the likelihood of artificially reared pheasant chicks on reaching adult hood. It was this situation that gave Robin Hood the opportunity to rob the rich and give to the poor. He first came to my notice when I heard distressing tales from my father about this unfortunate man. Regularly he lost pheasant chicks to floods, theft or natural predators. Every year this unlucky keeper would contact men such as my father to enquire if they had any surplus chicks he could buy. Working on such a large estate he always needed to purchase thousands of chicks to replace those lost. A demand my father and other keepers could not meet. He would then reluctantly contact one of the large commercial breeders of pheasant chicks for replacement birds. Buying chicks at such a late date meant that he had to pay over the odds for these birds.

What later we came to learn that these unfortunate chicks were not lost to flood, rain or natural predators, but were sold to one of the many large pheasant breeding companies. Given the vulnerability of pheasant chicks to any number of natural hazards, it never occurred to any of the managers on the estate that they were being hoodwinked. The money he got for these chicks he spent in the local pub, were he was a popular figure. What was surprising was all the pub regulars and most of the local villagers knew what he was doing, but none ever informed on him! He was a popular local figure, as he was never found wanting when it came to his turn to buy his round.

Not standing your round was the one act that would have made you unpopular. I can remember a story printed in our local newspaper of a man being barred from a pub, because he never bought sufficient drinks. He was notorious for not wanting to pay for his drinks. He would try to persuade others to buy him a drink with the promise that he would buy one in return, which he never did. One of the regulars justified his banning on the grounds that he was a queer bird on account of his being a vicar’s son.

This story should be put into context. The money Robin Hood made from his illicit sales was never that great. While young pheasant chicks fetched a good price, the money from their sale would never have made a man rich. The wages paid to their staff by country landowners was never generous. Throughout my childhood there was the Agricultural Wages Board, that ensured that such people paid their workers a fair wage. When an employee such as Robin Hood put one over on his employers rather than earning censure, he was accorded the respect of his fellow workers and the villagers. In fact who was the real villain, I would suggest it was the large pheasant chick breeders who knowingly bought these illicit chicks for less than the market price.

Robin Hood was a man of real charm, which is perhaps why he got away with his nefarious activities. One journalist was so impressed with him that he featured him two articles on country life in his newspaper. Probably he used to same charm to mislead his employers. If I remember correctly there was even a short feature on him on a television programme.

What I have described in this essay could never happen today. Estates are now commercial concerns and gamekeeping is now one of the profit making activities that contribute to the estate’s profits. Several thousand pounds can be charged to a guest for a day’s shooting on a popular estate. In consequence every aspect of the estate is subject to close supervision and a contemporary Robin Hood would soon be found out.

One last comment. Poachers if they were local were never of great concern to my father, as they only took rabbit or pheasant to feed their family. What were of concern were the encroachment of organised criminal gangs from the city on the poaching trade. One of my father friends unfortunately died at the hands of these people, as one said he was hit one too many times over the head. The killer was from the city and was never caught.