nature: the physical world in terms of landscape, plants, and animals, as distinct from human creations (New Penguin English Dictionary)
'Nature' has meant many different things to different people. There's 'nature red in tooth and claw.' Selective bullshit. Equally unrealistic is a sentimental romanticised vision of nature, communicated, for example, through some of the paintings of the nineteenth century German artist Caspar David Friedrich. Then again there's David Attenborough nature, put forward in numerous television documentaries. According to this view, animals are solely preoccupied with the search for nourishment and reproduction, kind of sophisticated food and sex machines. Mr Attenborough has done lots of fine work for the world, but his vision is ultimately reductionist, and thereby fails the test.
The best thing would be to throw out the idea of nature completely. It is innately divisive, suggesting a false and irreconcilable split between 'human life' on the one hand, and 'nature' on the other. It alienates us from 'nature', by setting it up as something 'other', and in this way separates us from our own deeper nature, which is inextricably linked to the greater multidimensional reality of the cosmos. The word smacks of Judeo-Christian separatism, and the fatal delusion that the world 'out there' exists for the benefit of 'us'. It doesn't. 'Nature' is a fabrication of the separate-ego fallacy. Egos conspiring to maintain the great lie, of their own superior separatehood.
I recently had my first day among the mountains for three months. As almost any Highlander will tell you, it has been the coldest winter here since 1962-63. Actually, I still recall that extraordinary winter from my youth, though I was living in Buckinghamshire in the south of England at the time. In particular, I remember standing in the garden and feeling the weak but unmistakeably warm sun on my face, for the first time in months. I was bathed in a sense of great relief and bliss at the passing of the extreme cold; I must have suffered greatly during that winter past.
I digress....
Today, a fast-moving yet curiously constant canopy of cloud moves across the tops, while streaks of snow are painted viciously across the mountain sides. Rainbow colours cast a shallow curve across the darkened crags of Beinn Liath Mhor briefly, to fade away then reappear in an instant. After an hour I approach the tall, slender cairn marking the crossroads of paths through heather and rock. It stands prominent, and with a few prayer flags flapping in the wind it could pass for a chorten in Nepal or Tibet. I reflect how it is maybe no accident that the finest flowering of Buddhist Tantra took place in the high, wild places of the Himalayas. The air is rarified, and the film separating us from gods and spirits is wafer thin. By the sea, Milarepa and Padmasambhava just wouldn't pass muster.
Following the winter, the landscape seems in shock. Long grasses flattened, and an eerie yellow colour after so long beneath the snow. Heather trampled, timid; a lone frog struggles to hide itself in the mud on my approach. Only the bog plants emanate a sense of 'at homeness'.
Then there are the meltwaters. Paths transformed into waterways, normally small streams turned into raging torrents, the water pools on theAllt Coire Lair become dark, bottomless pits. Water everywhere.
As I climb further into the yawning basin of the coire, pellets of ice (a Highland speciality at any time of year) begin to spit from the sky straight into my face. For a few minutes I stop and turn my back on them, so the ice shards fall onto my shoulders and harmlessly to the ground.
I reach a lochan at the top of the coire, still frozen over with ice. The clouds part for a moment, revealing snow-slashed, almost vertical mountain slopes tumbling towards the little village of Torridon in the middle distance. Then the view is gone, and I am alone again with the wind and the cloud. I climb steep slopes to my left, struggling to follow an indistinct path as it cuts up the waterlogged hillside and disappears beneath patches of dirty grey-white snow. On the crest at last, I know that the main summit lies to my left. The map tells me that it is not far, but in the thick atmosphere rocks come and go like huge grey apparitions. Crags fall away on either side, so I opt instead for the smaller summit to my right. No path here, and I feel like a pioneer, the first person to set foot on this rocky spur. I arive at the highest point, however, to find a small cairn built by previous travellers. The cloud once more envelops me in its chill embrace, the north-west wind speaks sternly. Slowly and carefully, I set off home.......
'Nature' has meant many different things to different people. There's 'nature red in tooth and claw.' Selective bullshit. Equally unrealistic is a sentimental romanticised vision of nature, communicated, for example, through some of the paintings of the nineteenth century German artist Caspar David Friedrich. Then again there's David Attenborough nature, put forward in numerous television documentaries. According to this view, animals are solely preoccupied with the search for nourishment and reproduction, kind of sophisticated food and sex machines. Mr Attenborough has done lots of fine work for the world, but his vision is ultimately reductionist, and thereby fails the test.
The best thing would be to throw out the idea of nature completely. It is innately divisive, suggesting a false and irreconcilable split between 'human life' on the one hand, and 'nature' on the other. It alienates us from 'nature', by setting it up as something 'other', and in this way separates us from our own deeper nature, which is inextricably linked to the greater multidimensional reality of the cosmos. The word smacks of Judeo-Christian separatism, and the fatal delusion that the world 'out there' exists for the benefit of 'us'. It doesn't. 'Nature' is a fabrication of the separate-ego fallacy. Egos conspiring to maintain the great lie, of their own superior separatehood.
I recently had my first day among the mountains for three months. As almost any Highlander will tell you, it has been the coldest winter here since 1962-63. Actually, I still recall that extraordinary winter from my youth, though I was living in Buckinghamshire in the south of England at the time. In particular, I remember standing in the garden and feeling the weak but unmistakeably warm sun on my face, for the first time in months. I was bathed in a sense of great relief and bliss at the passing of the extreme cold; I must have suffered greatly during that winter past.
I digress....
Today, a fast-moving yet curiously constant canopy of cloud moves across the tops, while streaks of snow are painted viciously across the mountain sides. Rainbow colours cast a shallow curve across the darkened crags of Beinn Liath Mhor briefly, to fade away then reappear in an instant. After an hour I approach the tall, slender cairn marking the crossroads of paths through heather and rock. It stands prominent, and with a few prayer flags flapping in the wind it could pass for a chorten in Nepal or Tibet. I reflect how it is maybe no accident that the finest flowering of Buddhist Tantra took place in the high, wild places of the Himalayas. The air is rarified, and the film separating us from gods and spirits is wafer thin. By the sea, Milarepa and Padmasambhava just wouldn't pass muster.
Following the winter, the landscape seems in shock. Long grasses flattened, and an eerie yellow colour after so long beneath the snow. Heather trampled, timid; a lone frog struggles to hide itself in the mud on my approach. Only the bog plants emanate a sense of 'at homeness'.
Then there are the meltwaters. Paths transformed into waterways, normally small streams turned into raging torrents, the water pools on theAllt Coire Lair become dark, bottomless pits. Water everywhere.
As I climb further into the yawning basin of the coire, pellets of ice (a Highland speciality at any time of year) begin to spit from the sky straight into my face. For a few minutes I stop and turn my back on them, so the ice shards fall onto my shoulders and harmlessly to the ground.
I reach a lochan at the top of the coire, still frozen over with ice. The clouds part for a moment, revealing snow-slashed, almost vertical mountain slopes tumbling towards the little village of Torridon in the middle distance. Then the view is gone, and I am alone again with the wind and the cloud. I climb steep slopes to my left, struggling to follow an indistinct path as it cuts up the waterlogged hillside and disappears beneath patches of dirty grey-white snow. On the crest at last, I know that the main summit lies to my left. The map tells me that it is not far, but in the thick atmosphere rocks come and go like huge grey apparitions. Crags fall away on either side, so I opt instead for the smaller summit to my right. No path here, and I feel like a pioneer, the first person to set foot on this rocky spur. I arive at the highest point, however, to find a small cairn built by previous travellers. The cloud once more envelops me in its chill embrace, the north-west wind speaks sternly. Slowly and carefully, I set off home.......
