Wordsworth once wrote of ‘spots of time’, experiences so intense they expand and inform existence ever after. They have a ‘renovating virtue’.
To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious.
I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings.
And I wonder, is it really so difficult to enter, in some slight degree, into the mind-frame of an animal? Are we not all beasts?
Despite all the seen and unseen motion of summer, there is a stillness in the landscape, as though it was trapped in a glass jar.
And nothing in nature is wasted. The bodies of the dead meadow ants will go to nourish the soil of the meadow. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Flesh to flesh.