natural world

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Beautiful #Cornwall

Cornwall has long been my bolt hole from the world, where I come to switch off. I find myself back here for the second time in a week, spending this glorious Easter weekend with family.

One of my favourite pastimes here is walking the coast. There is a particular stretch I must have walked a hundred times over the years, between Portreath and Godrevy. Since my family moved to Illogan, I have turned it into a round walk, from the top of Park Bottom, through Tehidy Woods to the coast, past Hell’s Mouth and on to Godrevy Point, then back to Portreath.

I’ve yet to to do the full round walk on this trip, and might not, but I have made the trip to Godrevy and Hell’s Mouth a couple of times. Here are some photos from my walks over the last couple of weeks, including the seals basking on the beach. I’ve also thrown in a few of Holywell Bay that I only discovered, shamefully, last week.

Cornwall has also inspired a lot of writing, too. This is a piece from a few years ago that was inspired by a walk very similar to those I have enjoyed these past weeks.

A Cornish Walk

They sold ale here long ago, 

To miners and travellers,

This ancient kiddleywink

Maintaining a vigil over

The crossroad hedges.

I take a winding lane past

A slope of straggle-eared

Wheat, through a dark

Cathedral tunnel of oak,

Beech and elm, past the

Mining way where weary

Cousin Jacks once walked,

Dreaming of New World

Lives an ocean’s sail away.

On, then, down Green Lane,

Where golden corn meets

Blue water meets bluer sky,

To the cliffs that loom

Above the sand and rocks

That story-boarded my

Childhood adventures of

Wreckers and pirates,

And above the tunnels from

Caves to twisty cottages

Cradled in the granite.

On to the moor, high

Above the beaches

Where revenue men

Fought smugglers for kegs

Of rum and gin, and crates

Of tea and tobacco from

Magical lands, where shaggy

Ponies chew the grass and

Watch those passing by

With lazy curiosity.

Further on, sheep, beyond

The dips and climbs that

Drain lungs and legs

And test the heart, 

Smile furtively, before

Shuffling slowly cross the 

Meadow, a late August’s

Morning sun beating down

On wool-laden backs.

And by the crumbling path’s

Edge, a scent of low tide,

Of salt-crusted grass and

Fresh sea breezes, lifts

Me out of my thoughts

And causes me to smile:

Pleasure in such simplicity.

By the roadside Café  I

Pause, tea and frozen

Orange to slake a thirst, and

I think back on the years

I have walked these paths,

The company kept from 

Time to time, though,

Ruefully, I acknowledge,

More often alone than not.

And as I strike out on the

Final miles, I pass the vicious

Maw where once a foundered

Trawler’s bell tolled its haunting

Requiem for those that

Drowned one stormy night,

But, where rust and waves

Have silenced even that

Lonely memorial, all that

Remains are the memories

Of those of us that knew.

Through fields of cattle and

Over stiles, and on and on,

I climb the final headland

Until a gleaming jewel, 

The island lighthouse, presents

My exhausted journey’s end. 

Satisfied, I make my rest and

Wonder: why this walk, year

After year? Why this stretch

Of coast above all others?

Why the peace from so much

Toil? Is it just the promise of

The sea’s refreshing churn?

No matter why, I smile, and

Close my eyes to dream a while.

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Arrogance and ArmaLites: the cruel folly of the trophy hunters

Emperor_of_Exmoor_(red_stag)

“It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.”
Samuel Johnson (1709-84), Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson

In October 2010, reports appeared in UK newspapers proclaiming that the Emperor of Exmoor, a giant stag given his name by photographer Richard Austin, had been shot. The red deer stag is the largest indigenous mammal in the British Isles and at almost nine feet tall, and weighing 300 pounds, the Emperor was a magnificent example of its kind. The Guardian reported that he was shot and killed close to the Tiverton to Barnstaple road at the height of the mating season and quoted Peter Donnelly, an Exmoor-based deer management expert, saying it was a disgrace the animal had been shot during the mating season: “The poor things should be left alone during the rut, not harried from pillar to post. If we care about deer we should maintain a standard and stop all persecution during this important time of the year.” 

I’ve never been an absolutist on hunting. I understand the need for there to be management of herds and for vermin to be controlled. I worry, too, that so many children today have no understanding of where their food comes from. (In one recent study by the British Nutrition Foundation, 18% of primary school children thought fish fingers came from chickens.) However, I have never been able to reconcile myself to the pointless destructiveness of trophy hunting.

It’s more than a vague feeling or an intellectual opinion. It is a very physical and emotional response to the idea that man (and it is usually men, not women) has to prove himself by killing other creatures, for no other reason than the sheer hell of it. I first encountered that response as a child, reading Willard Price’s Safari Adventure, and it has remained with me ever since. To my mind, such testosterone-addled, adrenalised thrill-killing demeans us as human beings.

article-0-1C49273D00000578-824_634x449Fast forward to 15 March 2014 and in today’s Daily Mirror are two stories which reveal that our appetite for momentary glory at the expense of the animal kingdom is as great as ever it was.

First of all, poachers hunting for antlers have killed a New Forest deer known as the Monarch. According to the report, the poachers used a calibre of rifle too low to kill cleanly and instead the deer, badly wounded, drowned as it tried to swim to safety.

Spend a moment imagining the sequence of events. Spend a moment imagining the fear that magnificent creature experienced as the bullet crashed into its flesh. The pain as it tried to get away from violent intruders into its safe space, its fight-or-flight response leading it to crash towards a familiar stretch of water that had been a place of rest and refreshment for sixteen years. Think about its desolate coughing bleat as it limped towards death. And then those last, terrified gasps as it drowned, its exhausted body weakened further by blood loss.

All because greedy, vainglorious men wanted to hang its antlers on a dining room wall.

500-pound-wild-hog-3236934And then, across the Atlantic, the story repeats itself. A different country, yes, a different animal, yes, but once again actions that lead from that same ignorant bravado of inadequate men. Unlike the two deer, the protagonist has been only too happy to be associated with his ‘triumph’. A cretinous redneck who’d not be out of place in a North Carolina remake of Deliverance, Jett Webb is shown posing proudly with his ArmaLite AR-10, resting on his kill – a giant 36-stone wild boar nicknamed ‘Hogzilla’ that had become the stuff of local legend. He shot it in the Indian Woods area of Bertie County, having hid out in the woods at night, but there was no Hemmingway-esque poetic reflection on this particular kill.

Jett’s insightful comment?

“The sweet-tasting corn and a night-hunting light was too much for this oversized heap of pork chops.”

What ignorance. What pointless cruelty.

In the deaths of the Emperor, the Monarch and Hogzilla we have gained nothing and lost much. Gone are the chances for stories that make a place, that lend wonder to those exploring for the first time, the “what if…?” and the “perhaps we might…!”. Gone are the chances for a glimpse of nature’s magnificence made manifest in three animals whose unassuming majesty had the potential to induce wonder in inquisitive young minds.

And, as usual, greed will be excused as endeavour by those that celebrate and justify this pointless pursuit.

Samuel Johnson couldn’t have been more right.

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The Polar Vortex and the fishy freeze

AS we know, the Polar Vortex brought widespread disruption to North America. We quickly became meteorological experts, even if those of a more pedantic frame of mind attempted in vain to explain that it was a Circumpolar Vortex and that the terminology in the mainstream media was a malign attempt to deceive and spread misinformation (rather than convenient shorthand for a news industry that was already out of its scientific depth).

This post on Scientific American gives a quick run-down of what a Polar Vortex is.

Stunning pictures have emerged from across the US of the consequences of the latest big freeze. The Daily Mail had pictures from Reuters of Niagra freezing over, whilst the Guardian showcased amazing snow scenes from across the US:

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At the same time that America was freezing, parts of Scandinavia were enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures. Which makes what happened in Norway all the more interesting. NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company, carried reports this week of a sudden fall in temperature, combined with freezing winds, that led to the instant freezing of a vast school of herring that were fleeing cormorants.

The pictures are amazing:

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Perspectives from Saturn

saturn

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

On 23rd July, NASA published a picture of Earth taken from the dark side of Saturn by its Cassini spacecraft. It is, apparently, only the third time that Earth has been photographed from the outer reaches of the solar system. The picture was taken in a photo session of Earth that occurred on 19th July between 2:27 to 2:42 pm PDT (9.27 to 9.42 pm in the UK). We have the technology to take that kind of picture from almost 900 million miles away.

Look at that amazing picture and think about it just for a moment.

Where were you and what were you doing between 9.27 and 9.42 pm?

I was eating my tea, having walked home through Gloucester Park after a trip to the cinema and a showing of Pacific Rim. It had been a beautiful evening – I posted a picture on Facebook – and I spoke to Laura on my way.

I’m on that dot. We are all on that dot. All of us together.

Suddenly, we all seem very insignificant.

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An English countryside and an English country garden

A couple of weekends ago I decided to get up early on a Saturday morning and, with Farming Today on my headphones, take a walk around the Langdon Hills Ridge.

Occasional readers of Fragments and Reflections will have seen similar pictures before. However, no matter how many times I make this particular walk, and no matter how many times I photograph the hills, fields and footpaths, it looks different every time.

Some of these reveal just how beautiful the landscape is in our neck of the woods – and how vital initiatives such as Langdon Hills Living Landscapes and the campaign to protect Dry Street are.

I finished my walk at “Hillcroft”. My parents’ garden is as fine an example of an English country garden as you can find. And I am not sure you can get much more English – and welcome – a breakfast than toast and Marmite. There is a real sense of satisfaction in walking such a distance before 9am. I heartily recommend it.

I hope you enjoy these photographs as much as I enjoyed taking them.

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Beautiful and agonising – a video showing the damage we do our planet

Every now and then in this digital age we are sent links to videos or articles that make us stop and think about the way we live.

My friend Andy has always been a passionate environmentalist. He posted this on his Facebook.

Please watch it and share.

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The industriousness of ants – strangely hypnotic

I stumbled across this video on the Internet. There’s something strangely hypnotic about the way these ants work – and bearing in mind their size it seems all quite incredible.

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Mushrooms to save the planet?

It may sound like Day of the Triffids in reverse, but it might just be that mushrooms are about to save the planet.

Bloomberg Business Week reports on the work of Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre and the innovative work on plastic substitutes that they have been doing with mushroom fibres:

It starts with a mash of corn stalks and vegetable husks impregnated with mushroom spores. The fungus eats the plant nutrients, then grows a complex root network that fills the shapes of the molds. The final product is a foam that looks something like a big wafer of nougat candy. It is placed in an oven to stop the spores from growing and to give the material the proper texture, hardness, and elasticity.

“The products literally grow themselves. In the dark. With little to no human contact,” says McIntyre. Each mold can be treated to create a material with different qualities. Home insulation must be fire-retardant and energy efficient; cabinets have to be sturdy; a car dashboard or bumper has to be strong but with give.”

And to get rid of it?

Simply throw it on the compost heap and it is gone in weeks.

The reason this is so important?

Polystyrene.

Polystyrene is non-biodegradable and so takes hundreds of years to disappear. The blowing agents that are used to expand it can be highly flammable. Some versions of it are made with hydrofluorocarbons that are over a thousand times more potent in terms of global warming potential than carbon dioxide. It is also regularly excluded from recycling services as it is uneconomical to collect and compact (due to its lack of density versus the space it occupies).

The company behind the mushroom fibre revolution, Ecovative Design, has just signed a deal with the packaging behemoth Sealed Air, the company responsible for Bubble Wrap and Cryovac. Both Dell and Steelcase are already using the material for packaging and it promises a biodegradable revolution in how we ship stuff.

I wonder if this is something that the impressive Centre for Process Innovation should pick up here in the UK? They are the increasingly impressive outfit based in Redcar. In their own words:

“CPI helps companies to prove and scale up processes to manufacture new products and create more sustainable, efficient and economic industries of the future.”

There is some real talent out there in the British economy, particularly in the emerging green and high-tech industries. A UK angle on this would help boost manufacturing, jobs and the wider economy, whilst at the same time helping to tackle the huge waste problem there is with packaging.

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Strange natural phenomena: Mexico’s Cave of the Crystals (Cueva de los Cristales)

Spending day in and day out behind a desk in the centre of London, it is easy to forget what an extraordinary, strange and beautiful place the world is.

in 2000, miners in Mexico, two brothers, were excavating a new tunnel in Naica, Mexico when they stumbled across what is perhaps one of the most beautifully strange places on Earth – the Cave of the Crystals. At first glance, as this great piece on the website Earth says, it wouldn’t look out place on Superman’s Planet Krypton.

Built on an ancient fault line, the cave’s space had once been filled with water, rich in minerals, that had been heated by magma and that maintained a stable temperature for nearly half a million years, allowing gigantic crystals to form.

Since 2000, several other chambers have been found, filled with these crystals, and now accessible due to the mining company constantly keeping the water pumped out.

Looking at this, it makes me wonder what we might find in the earth beneath our feet.

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