Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine December 2020
EWGN 2020 12a Focus pix
Nurturing Nature
I wonder how we’re going to remember this year, 2020? Each of us will have our own unique response to that question but somewhere in the answer, whatever else has happened, big or small, good or bad, I’m guessing all of us would mention Covid and lockdown in our personal review. It has affected everything else that we’ve experienced, both the highs and the lows.
 
Maybe, above all, it has highlighted for all of us that actually we are very small in the face of natural events. Even our Prime Minister has recently commented we must ‘be humble in the face of nature’, and that seems quite a big admission for a politician whose very job description includes national security. There is a feeling around that we don’t quite know what will happen next. Perhaps, as a country, for the first time in decades, we are experiencing a level of uncertainty and insecurity that we’re unfamiliar with.
 
At some level, we had forgotten that we are not in control of everything, and that actually every day when we eat enough food, are well and have shelter is a day of true blessing and a reason for sincere gratitude. Nature is fierce, anything but fluffy and cute, and we need to learn more deeply lessons of how to take a humbler part in the natural world, how to work in partnership with the whole of it, how to tread gently and leave smaller footprints
 
That’s quite a big brief for a few people of limited resources in one part of the north of Cumbria, but that’s the challenge and also the joy of it, if we allow it to be so, because our tiny drops of effort add to everybody else’s, and in that sense at least ‘we are all in this together’, if we choose to be. Even as I write this, I’m watching a very swollen and powerful River Eden flowing past my house transporting numerous tree trunks and other detritus at quite some speed. Not so long ago, it was shallow and serene, and a happy summer playground for many, paddling, swimming or canoeing. The individually small raindrops have gathered together to make quite a difference. 
 
We can add our small drops of effort to all the others and make quite some difference too. It isn’t wasted and it can be our way of acknowledging that as a species we need to be different and do different, a kind of token of our ongoing commitment. I think one of my ‘small drops’ might be to create a small garden pond, because I’m told that that is one of the single most effective ways we can aid and increase the nature in our garden. What about you?

Philippa Skinner