“There are only a few pursuits by which you’re rewarded for merely staying nonetheless.”
These had been the phrases of a birdwatcher I met in Walthamstow Wetlands, an enormous city wetlands only a stone’s throw from Central London. The wetlands are a haven for an eye-watering variety of fowl species, from cormorants and herons to spoonbills, peregrines, goldeneye and kingfishers, made all of the extra exceptional by the backdrop of the Metropolis of London only a few miles away.
Within the final couple of years I’ve joined the ranks of the birdwatchers who flock to the wetlands on an nearly every day foundation to flee the bustle of London. From figuring out subsequent to nothing about birds – I might nearly spot a robin on a Christmas card – I’ve discovered myself wrapped up within the nearly zen-like expertise of ready and watching.
Birdwatching is, at its coronary heart, a form of meditation. It instructions your full consideration. It requires an entire consciousness of your environment. Each little flit of motion within the bushes, within the water, within the air. Each word of a distant warbling name. Each rustle of leaves or patter of falling seeds that don’t match the pure rhythm of nature’s forwards and backwards. It calls for that you just focus totally on that one spot identified to be a preferred perch for the native kingfisher, and never pull your eyes even for a second. To not test your emails, nor your notifications, nor to scroll mindlessly.
And as you wait, you slowly turn into extra conscious of all the pieces else. You see the bugs you’ve by no means seen earlier than. The colors of crops you may have by no means paid consideration to earlier than. The seeds dancing within the wind as late summer season shifts to autumn. You tune right into a wavelength that has all the time been there however you had by no means bothered to take heed to earlier than, as a result of to your total life firms have been telling you to purchase and spend and devour and need and want.
You’ve by no means been given an opportunity to only be.
But right here you’re, within the cool stillness of a grassy riverbank, and the minutes and hours are melting away into nothingness. Quickly you overlook about all the pieces else totally.
After which, when you may have damaged down that barrier to endurance that expertise firms have spent years reinforcing, you’re rewarded. There’s a vivid flash of blue and gold and a kingfisher lands on a perch above the glowing river. The perch could sway within the breeze, however the fowl’s eyes stay mounted on the water. With out warning, it dives. It barely disturbs the water with arrowlike precision, and in a second it’s up once more, again on the perch, solely this time with a fish. It beats the fish on the perch as soon as – twice – and swallows it complete. A shadow passes overhead – a peregrine looking. The kingfisher is gone immediately.
All of it occurs in a number of brief minutes on the most, however the thrill is unbeatable. The endorphins are working time beyond regulation, the stresses of labor and the pull of your telephone are lengthy gone. You may’t keep in mind the final time you had been this near nature. You’re feeling lifted.
You’re feeling healed.
You realise these firms have been flawed the whole time. That the extra they push you to purchase and devour, the extra they produce, in an limitless cycle, and none of it has ever given you what you needed. And now we’re feeling the results of this insatiable system.
Consumption has pushed our planet past the boundaries of comfortably sustaining human life. The incomprehensible quantity of power and sources wanted to maintain pushing out new merchandise and transport them to our doorways is melting the ice caps at file pace, heating the oceans to file temperatures, and eradicating extra of the pure world than ever earlier than.
The billboards and TV advertisements and TikTok style traits telling you in regards to the newest low-cost offers don’t point out the unprecedented wildfires in Canada, Spain or Greece, the lethal floods in China, or the extinction of unknown numbers of species annually. It wouldn’t be good enterprise to take action.
Know-how firms would possibly declare to have the solutions, however we are able to’t devour our approach out of a biodiversity disaster. To present nature – and ourselves – a preventing likelihood of survival, we should break our abusive relationship with consumption.
We received’t restore the net of life except we perceive it. And we received’t perceive it except we expertise it. Until we shut off our telephones, swap off our TVs, get out of our vehicles, and sit by a riverbank to observe a kingfisher dart by means of the water like a luminescent torpedo. Until we take heed to the sharp calls of the plucky warblers within the reedbeds, or watch the Canada geese migrate overhead in navy formation.
Until we take a second to be nonetheless and affected person.
After we select moments of quiet, the pure world rewards us with spectacular shows of color, music, and life. Shows that remind us of who we actually are, what we stand to lose, and encourage us to guard it.
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In regards to the Creator: Thomas is a filmmaker, author and environmentalist dwelling in London. His objective is to reconnect humanity to nature by means of storytelling. Discover extra from him at Urban Nature Diary.
