“there can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is JOY, and when I talk of the joy we can find in nature, this is what I mean.”
Michael McCarthy writes this early in his powerful book
The Moth Snowstorm and I found this and a lot more in the book speaking to me. I especially connected with his observations on how – in England – our native wildlife is dwindling as the countryside is increasingly managed, poisoned and concreted.
Last weekend we made a small pilgrimage to a favourite place, the Devil’s Dyke on the Cambridgeshire – Suffolk border. This is a steep, seven mile long earth wall that is and up to 10.5 metres high and built in around 600 AD to keep the Britons from overwhelming new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It is an awesome earthwork that is still too steep to run up and down. This steepness means it has become a bit of a wildlife refuge as it can’t be ploughed or mowed.
Much of the substrate is local chalk so the wild flowers are superb here, and July is the time to see lizard orchids. It was also great for butterflies.
The dyke is a peninsular of wild surrounded by the Newmarket Race Course – where the magisterial Great Bustard once roamed – and it is cut by the A14. There was traffic noise, a light aircraft took off from close by and yet, focussing down close, it was possible to enjoy the flowers and the birds and the butterflies. It is definitely worth a look. I foud joy there.
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| Pyramidal orchids |
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| Marbled white enjoying thistle nectar |
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| Lizard orchid slightly past its best |
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| Sunlight catching the colours of a skipper on scabious |