Paying Ready Attention

Many birds travel stunning distances when the seasons call. Bird migration has been the subject of much study and many stories. Some fanciful, some exaggerated, some true. Many birds are defined by their migration journeys. Many people travel lesser distances when the seasons call. Holidays have been the subject of much study and many stories. Some fanciful, some exaggerated, some true. Many people are defined by their holiday destinations. In the past, people wanted to know where the birds went, what it meant when they came back and what hands guided them across the vastness of the world. Humans invented stories to account for these movements. Some fanciful, some exaggerated, some true. Storytelling as explanation may be hardwired into the brain, indeed storytelling may have given us our brain. Our storytelling brain gave us Swifts that live in the winter mud of ponds, geese that lived inside barnacles and the Bible. It seems some stories have more tenacity than others! Early humans p...

In a comment about my last post RB talked about the work the Charles Darwin had done on the movement of seeds on the feet of birds. That got me thinking about some pictures I had not used. So here they are. Looking at footprints is like looking into the past. A kind of ghost image that allows you to pay attention after the chance moment of observation has slipped by. Sand, mud, feet, claws. All linked to form a pattern and the pattern tells you something. Something different from seeing the (in this case) bird, something different from having the bird in the hand. It’s a different way of knowing the same thing. Seeds and birds feet. Islands and colonization. It make me wonder what role cars, boots, sleeping mats and fishing nets play in the movement of weeds. What travelers do we bring when we visit the special places we love? What footprints do we leave that others may find? What do we bring that could spell change for the islands of naturalness we visit?

Trip to a sewage works anybody? No? How about getting up at 4.30am two days after Christmas? No? Still not interested? I know! Let’s get up at 4.30am two days after Christmas and visit a sewage works! So here I am, early in the morning, possibly the only person awake for 500m in any direction, getting ready to drive to the Werribee sewage works – rebadged as WTP (Western Treatment Plant), but it’s not fooling anybody. The trip along the Geelong Road was unsurprisingly quiet. Yet even here there were things to be seen. Mists hugged some fields and fled from others. Some fields were bare, others clothed in white. There seemed to be no pattern. Cows floated, seemingly legless in the mist. The scene looked African. On a side road, a fox dashed from the mist, seeking food, a hare froze, seeking sanctuary in stillness. The mist cleared to show the You Yangs, Melbourne’s asymmetrical western hills. If these were the Pap’s of Melbourne they would be scheduled for cosmetic surgery. Werribee lie...

Thursday was the last day of work. An early closure, coffee late in the morning, then home. Catch the train and start the final preparations for the big day. The train platform was almost empty. A train for the line I did not want had just departed, taking most of the passengers with it. Just a few people waiting for the Belgrave train, me included. I sat on a bench, thought about listening to some music, but did not. I just thought. It has, by almost any standards, been a big year for me. I noticed the old lady walking through the ticket barrier. Frail, but not broken, old but not yet without independence. She sat next to me, slightly closer than I would have expected, but I such is life. You can’t travel on public transport without pulling your personal space tight around you. But this did seem a little strange. Plenty of space, but she choose to sit close. Almost at once she started talking – “I’m only going one stop” she said “I have run short of my tablets”. “I used to walk” she s...

I met somebody a few days ago who claimed he had never grown anything. He was referring to plants specifically, rather than a beard or a deep dissatisfaction with government action on climate change. Specifically, he claimed never to have grown a plant. I have to ask; what the hell did he do at school? Did he not have Mr. Freeman (who had already grown a beard) and the long succession of cuttings and graftings that thrived in the greenhouse, but did less well in the dark confines of a school locker? Did he not germinate seeds with Mr. Rix (who only eat plants and noting else) in Biology? Did he not grow flowers in the back garden to keep his mum happy? Listen to Percy Thrower on the BBC? Have pot plants at college – that’s plants in pots if you were wondering! Keep carnivorous plants as a marker of teenage angst? He may, of course, have lived in a high rise flat, with concrete views and grey vistas, with corporation gardens stripped of all but the most robust plants, where growing pla...

Much can be learned from a single phrase. When a person says “Did you see the report in the paper?” it is clear they assume you know which paper they mean. They mean their paper, the paper they read. And if they ask you about “the paper” they assume you read the same one they do. In this way much can be learned. Much can also be hidden in a single phrase. Many truths can be obscured, many understandings prevented. “Garden Variety” is such a phrase. It means ordinary, humdrum, unremarkable. We get birds in the garden – this in itself is unremarkable – so we get a variety of garden birds. But are they always Garden Variety birds? I think not. To view our garden birds as ordinary, humdrum and unremarkable is to miss the point. It cloaks those birds in a veil, a veil that needs to be lifted. Many garden birds are common in the extreme, they may seen banal because of familiarity. They are never noticed because they are always seen. They are the garden constants. Some birds are noticed beca...

“In JUNE Kipper lay on his back and watched as little things with legs and wings climbed the spindly grass and whizzed into the big, blue sky. “There are a lot more things with legs and wings than you would think”, thought Kipper.” That is from a wonderful book called “One Year with Kipper” by Mick Inkpen. If you are reading this and you have preschool children you should track it down and read it to them. People look for wisdom in all kids of places. Books especially. It gives the world a nice kind of symmetry that you can find truth in books of that make no claims to fact. Truth presented in a simple way does not have to be simplistic. Books like Kipper offset all the instances where others make sweeping claims to fact without any basis in truth. But a simple observation in a children’s book pointed me towards a certain set of thoughts. Coincidences abound. On the day after I read the Kipper book I saw a butterfly in the window of a clothes shop. It was early in the morning, a clear ...