OPINION
Gillian Burke
“I remind myself that life can be fragile but also irrepressible”
“EVEN IN THE MOST HOSTILE environments, life is ready to take hold. Adapted to survive sub-zero temperatures, mosses are among the first arrivals on Iceland’s newly formed sterile lava fields. Over 600 different species specialise in bringing life to Earth’s youngest rocks. Plants and fungi often blaze a trail for more complex communities and larger animals to move in. The power of flight affords seabird colonies access to remote territories where, once established, their droppings bring nitrogen to nutrient-poor soils, and rev up the food chain for a secondary succession of species to gain a foothold.
In a world where (at least to our minds) ‘nature’ is caught up in a messy entanglement with seemingly insoluble planet-sized problems, I like to look for ways to remind myself that life can be fragile, but is also irrepressible. From famous pioneer species such as birch trees, which spread across landscapes in a glacial march, to unlikely desert island castaways such as the feral pigs who managed to make a home on an uninhabited island in the Bahamas.
Closer to home, walk down any street and chances are you will see the delicate first leaves and seedlings of wayside plants, shrubs and trees forcing their way through the paving. It takes heavy footfall, traffic, constant repaving and even spraying with herbicides to stop the sea of asphalt, tarmac and concrete from being reduced to a crumble and swallowed up by a carpet of green, as brownfield sites and ancient ruins will attest.
This year, nature has delivered many welcome interruptions in the most unexpected ways. Watching rare eastern black-and-white colobus monkeys gorging on palm dates from a hospital window in Kenya was one such moment. A coastal updraught lifting a peregrine almost to within touching distance, and thus ending a particularly intense bickering session with my two teenagers in north Cornwall, was another.
As the ground cools off after a long hot summer, I look forward to watching the natural world slow down for the winter. I will look out for the flashes of iridescent blue that betray the presence of a kingfisher who, along with a curlew that is almost always nearby, I see foraging in rockpools on the incoming tide.
I welcome these moments as nature’s nudges: my very own environmental cues to worry less and marvel more. That is not to ignore real-world challenges. We may be united in an urgent need to protect our planet, but exactly how we achieve this can be an anxiety-riddled road to despair. Tough times exist as much in nature as they do in our everyday lives, with many of us feeling the pinch this winter, but there is real power in dialling up your daily dose of take-yourbreath-away wonderment.
What is more, you can get a supersized portion by sharing wonderment with others, as the film A New View of the Moon demonstrates in just over three joyful minutes. A telescope is taken onto the streets of Los Angeles to give passersby a close-up view of a familiar object. Watch it yourself on YouTube – it should leave you with little doubt that wonderment works.
Our planet circles around the sun with its very own celestial body, the moon, in tow as it glides through space cradled in the arm of just one of trillions of galaxies in an infinite universe. By definition, there is no space big enough to capture the scene. Even with the more modest ambition of sticking with just our solar system, say, an artist would need a seven-mile-wide canvas for a true-to-scale rendition, in which our planet would be no larger than a toy marble. With that in mind, this is your friendly reminder to get out this Christmas, look up and look around, and marvel at it all.
Catch up on all the episodes from this year’s Autumnwatch
Gillian Burke is a biologist, writer and presenter.
You can visit gillianburkevoice.com to read her blog and latest news.