Multi Sensory Experience

 

Snatch it while you still can. The elements of joyous wildness that still exist on Blacka are there to celebrate and we should do so before the philistines with their grants and power tools destroy all. Soon it will be just a memory.

In autumn like some others I flirt with the idea that these two magical seasons are somehow equal in appeal but really there's no contest. Spring is about rebirth and that should always trump graceful decline, lovely though that can be. Also autumn's appeal is largely visual while spring's also got sounds some of them exquisite like the sudden arrival of certain bird species. It's not too much to claim that it's a multi sensory season.

I wonder if it's a problem whether many people are unable to fully appreciate the wonders of spring in these more natural surroundings in that they are surrounded in their streets by more artificially induced over-dressed garden shrubs specially imported to produce an early and gaudy new season effect. Is the palate so over exposed to colourfully forced novelty that what we have here fails to register as it should?

The 9-Year-Old Test

One of the measures of value in a place for me has always been what I would have thought of it as a 9 year old.

This woodland passes the test with flying colours. It has life and mystery and secrets guaranteed to captivate a child. And these features are not static but change with the seasons. Today we didn't need the sun we had yesterday. New leaves added perspective as well as colour. Many birds sang and there was always promise of others.

And ground level is astonishing as bilberry shrubs get higher each year providing plenty of cover for birds and mammals - and children.

Management Horrors

Somebody once said they're the managers we love to hate. I don't accept that. There's no pleasure or satisfaction in it. It's genuinely upsetting to see and experience the rotten decision making, poor policy formation and incompetence on the ground in a place we love. Worst of all is the damage they do to the cause of conservation which at its best ought to be something we can respect even if we disagree with some aspects. Sadly it's rarely even that good and here they don't even try to earn respect.

Shortly they will be bringing back cows to Blacka, a shamefully anti-wildlife practice justified by absurd dogma. They already have sheep on one section, approximately one third of the whole Blacka site; and let's be clear: farm animals have no place on land that has been set aside for nature and wildlife, that's called a 'nature reserve'. If you don't trust nature itself to determine the look of a site, to accept at least that as a default position, with maybe some rare exceptions to be publicly scrutinised, then you are simply not a wildlife conservationist; you are in fact just another farmer, possibly congratulating yourself for  avoiding some of the worst practices of intensive agriculture, but still a farmer all the same.

SWT's barbed wire horror has recently undergone minor inspection and some reinforcement leaving it looking more like a botched job than before.

 After spending enormous sums of public money on erecting a gargantuan barrier  to keep their sheep in (and I repeat no sheep should be here at all)  they still fail to plug gaps under gates, thereby allowing them to escape. This one was observed from a distance. Let's hope no lamb was with it as people walk dogs in this area.

Eventually

They're much later up here but I like to think better. Not a complete wash of colour, more modest than that. At their best very early morning with dappled sunlight. And the badgers enjoy.

Dawn Over Dore

A favourite village of students of homophones and alliteration.

Doubtless someone has called it "The Gateway to ...... "

Dried Grey

 No wind dries more ruthlessly than an east wind. It's not supposed to be as dry as this in spring and walking into the east wind near dawn feels like a definition of heroism.

Some of the new exciting greenery has already suffered.

Paths look more grey than ever before, quite as different as under a ground frost.

It's a relief and a pleasure to turn into the charmed woodland I think of as a walled wild garden.

 The surrounding rhododendron may be unique in replicating the advantagest of a managed walled garden while delivering a particular kind of wildness.

That's never been understood by the managers who typically see that no good can ever come from the invasive shrub. Usually they would be right but wisdom comes when you understand that there can be exceptions to almost anything. After much persuasion they have made a concession in accepting that the shrubbery can partially stay on the west and north sides. But at this altitude in woodland it's the eastern blast that is most relentless, and each year we get at least one lengthy period when high pressure seems stuck in a position, well understood by residents of Bridlington etc.

Nevertheless this woodland has great appeal with many features that illustrate what rewilding has to offer. At the moment it also appeals to chain saw operatives who do not appreaciate this but value its proximity to the car park. Who wants a long walk back?

Homelife

It's the bigger picture that gets neglected when we struggle with the details. There's a desperate need for wildlife to have a home that's quite distinct from that of farmlife. That's what 'wild' should mean, a word that's too often shockingly abused. A useful way of looking at things and a corrective to some of the arrogance that's peculiar to humanity is to ask who or what belongs here? Once you start to manage and control a parcel of land you're in charge and can't easily see yourself as anything but indispensable, even if you only visit once a week; maybe you think ownership resides in you because you're paid to be 'responsible' and have certain powers. This is a curse of managerialism. But who or what has more right to be regarded as essential than the life that lives here 24 hours a day through all conditions?

It's a good idea when setting foot on natural and semi-natural land to clear our minds of all the jargon and terminology that goes with land management most of which has a political purpose of one kind or another. For me I like to think that ownership is for the residents.

The Robin and the Blackbird have their homes here and care nothing for words like biodiversity and habitats and others which are simply human constructs. Nothing beats direct experience of the land and wildlife. I'm aware that this sounds to some ears as anti-intellectual even philistine and that's not what's intended. We just need to freshen our experiences and cast aside, if only temporarily, the crude biodiversity statistics and jargon that increasingly seems to be the measure of value for the conservation industry workers we often see. But numbers tell a very limited story and I prefer to see the soul of a place differently, more directly.

Deer for example are so crucial to the soul of a place like Blacka yet to some managers the experience of them is inseparable from notions of 'carrying capacity' and vegetation management. It becomes, it would seem, impossible to appreciate real wildlife outside a mindset that's not much different to a livestock farmer's.

Large mammals on a semi natural landscape bring a place to life as nothing else quite can. They are here all the time. This morning was another bright May morning with the keenest of easterly winds testing our endurance so we knew where the local deer would not be. And they were unsurprisingly in a pleasantly sheltered but sunlit bit of woodland. It's now inconceivable that Blacka could be without deer just as without trees. But I sense that some in the conservation world would be untroubled by that, preoccupied as they are by bureaucratic biodiversity targets and action plans, forms to fill in and grants to apply for. How many people when they see the deer or the Robin put themselves in the position of these animals, out here in all conditions?

This is their home. We should respect that as their guests.