I turn off the road, enter the wood, and sit down under the tree. The sun gleams upon everything, there is glittering and shining everywhere. A green caterpillar is lowered down by an invisible thread in front of me, and as it swings about, the sun shines through its transparency… A bush over there is glittering with rain-drops, little white lanterns fastened to the lower side of twigs; but if I swing my head slightly to one side, some of those lights turn colour, becoming red and purple…
We have invented a word for it: beauty. I am surrounded here with law, order, and beauty, and am myself absolutely happy here… I begin to grasp the obvious fact that this place is — perfect. And suddenly I realize where I am! I am in the Garden of Eden.
—John Stewart Collis, The Worm Forgives the Plough. Vintage, 2009. pages 232-233.
I try to get down to the pond on Frog Day because, whatever the weather, it’s always such fun looking into trays, seeing what people have caught, and helping people to get a rough idea of what sort of wildlife they are looking at. The parents too are frequently fired up with (especially boyish) enthusiasm. One dad turned out to be expert at catching newts; another family caught dozens of tadpoles (all still without legs).
People come and go; some are regulars, some are new, some were just passing by and are astonished to find a nature reserve here, let alone a pond and volunteers and free pond-dipping and wriggly wild animals.
And there definitely weren’t just the usual suspects in the water, either.
This really was a surprise; a Hydra, not just bright green but actually budding. These tiny animals are coelenterates, like corals and jellyfish, with no proper gut running mouth-to-anus, but just a mouth surrounded by the tentacles, and a hollow bag of a body; anything undigested has to come out the way it went in. The animal is green with symbiotic algae, so it has quite a bit of plant about it, and when it isn’t in a white dish, it’s practically invisible.
This little fly has two tails, and may well be a Stonefly; it is a lot smaller than the common Mayflies, which have three tails. It seems like a special animal today.
A fine Dragonfly nymph was captured in one dish; here it is, being examined closely by one youngster. I saw a Broad-Bodied Chaser near the pond some years ago, so it might be that species.
With their characteristic three tails, the Mayfly nymphs are distinctive. Here in one dish are some, along with what seems to be a long slim beetle nymph, and the Dragonfly nymph. There were quite a few Damselfly nymphs about too, some quite boldly green.
At four we packed up to go and have a well-deserved cup of tea. As I turned round, I realised the Yellow Irises the other side of the boardwalk were in full bloom.
Without wishing to question the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks, with their six kinds of love, I do think they missed out one of the most crucial varieties. And that is love for the natural world, for the wilds from which we sprung and of which we are still — though we may fight against the idea — a part.
I am drawn to the concept of ‘biophilia’, the idea that we have an innate need to be in contact with nature. It strikes me that the word could be used to express the seventh variety of love. Clearly we need those other varieties — erotic love, the love of friends, playful love, pragmatic love, self-love and universal love. But I believe we also need love of nature.
—Hugh Warwick, The Beauty in the Beast: Britain’s Favourite Creatures and the People Who Love Them. Simon & Schuster, 2012. page 305.