Long time a greening

April 13th, 2008

treedaffs.jpgThis life-long townie is filled with wonder at his first spring on

Lyme

Bay. At how nature, the Great Conductor, summons each player in turn to awake from the long sleep of winter. She moves at a majestic pace. By this morning some of her biggest players, the oak, beech and apple trees were still displaying the stark bare branches of winter. But underneath the apple tree, the daffodils, already past their best, are surrounded by bluebells and primroses. The hawthorn and the elder trees are already wearing their summer green outfits. And the lawn is covered with daisies and dandelions. The camellia is now out, adding a splash of contrasting colour to the ivy and the brambles which are green all year.

Nature is also the Great Painter, who paints a different picture for us every day, no, every hour. Presently the skyscape is crowed with a mixture of dark grey rain clouds and billowing white clouds. The sea is a light green, merging into a band of dark grey in front of Chesil

Beach and Portland Bill. The sun is bright enough to pick out the yellow sand on the beach, even at that distance. And

Charmouth

Beach is bright yellow. The lady who owns the green hut café has thrown open the shutters, and put her tables and chairs outside, where it is warm enough for the Sunday strollers to take their coffee outside.

 

Only three weeks ago, the Great Conductor, summoned her most powerful player, to perform a mighty crescendo, which rained the car park at Charmouth, with pebbles, driftwood and assorted plastic bottles and boxes. This morning she is playing the slow movement. Yesterday’s chilly and gusty wind has been displaced by a gentle breeze. The sun has already demonstrated that even in Britain in April it can raise the temperature to a level warm enough even for Americans reared in centrally heated homes. But the sun has not had it all his own way. There have been light refreshing showers to quench the thirst of all the players in the orchestra as they emerge from hibernation.

 

On mornings like this I can understand why people like Tony Blair and George W Bush and all those fundamentalist Muslims, believe that all these wonders must have been created and orchestrated by an all powerful God or Allah. And I lose patience with Richard Dawkins, who I think gets near to making science into an all powerful God.

 

I wish Dawkins would take more account of the kind of truths discovered by great artists and poets.

I am content with William Wordsworth who urged us all to get out and let nature be our teacher. That leads me to respect the findings of Charles Darwin and his successors, including Richard Dawkins. How could I not respect their findings, because the evidence for those findings is all there in the fossils of Charmouth

Beach, which I can see even as I write this?

But I wish Dawkins and his ilk had more respect for the things in nature, and in human nature, which are not yet explained by science.

camtree.jpg

 

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