Nothing is so beautiful as spring.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
A short one this week, just a reminder that I’m still alive; just as spring is a reminder that the natural world is still alive, despite the best efforts of industrial civilisation to kill it off. This is the vernal equinox, the turning-point when the days become longer than the nights. This is the time that seemed an eternity away six months ago, and which will fade in its turn.
Life goes on. This is a trite saying, but it contains an important truth. Life got through the Great Dying and several other extinction events that were at least as destructive as anything H. sapiens is likely to throw at it. Life adapts. We build motorways, and song-birds get louder. You might notice that this spring, if you’re lucky.
There are plenty of grounds for pessimism at the moment, by no means limited to the things that get onto the front page of the newspaper or to the top of your news feed. Worse things can happen than a fall in the value of banking shares, and at least some of those things pretty certainly will. Nevertheless it’s hard not to feel cheerful when you hear a blackbird sing, even with the M25 in the background.
Comments are welcome, but I do pre-moderate them to make sure they comply with the house rules.
The sound of falling leaves 