[ 4 minute read ]
Familiar walks along the same path
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You can tell the age of a hedge by how many species of blackberry grow in it. Over the decades, birds will rest in the hedge and perhaps having eaten blackberries from somewhere else, deposit the seeds within the hedge. It used to be said that a two hundred year old hedge might have five blackberry species growing in it. Of course, we need to understand that there may not be more than one blackberry species in the nearby area and so a hedge could be planted today and in two hundred years time there may be only one species of blackberry in it or even none.
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For me, the disappointment of eating a seedy blackberry picked from a hedge is still part of enjoying the countryside, or just a hedge by a road. I can’t help thinking that having the knowledge that the hedge I pass to get to the next village has both seedy blackberries and more edible blackberries is a comfort to me in some way. It is a familiarity with my surroundings. After seven years of passing alongside the same hedge I feel that I am almost on talking terms with it; not in the same way I talk to the seedlings I grow and then transplant; they don’t know any different to me being always around. But let’s not pretend they actually know me or have any kind of sentient feeling or sensation of me. I just like to mumble while I am engaged with loose and relaxing focus.
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We see ants follow each other across a footpath or even a picnic blanket. At first, we see one, and then a few, randomly searching for food. Eventually, if we watch long enough, more and more ants will follow only a single path to the foodstuff and back to their nest. Essentially, they are following a chemical scent trail laid down by any ants that found the food. The scent they laid changed from ‘I am searching for food’ to ‘I have found food’.
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Scent trails are not uncommon in nature. A kestrel will hover by a road above the verge looking straight down into the short undergrowth. These raptors can see reflected ultra-violet light. You won’t see a kestrel doing this after it has been raining. Rodents such as mice, shrews and voles leave a chemical trail that reflects ultra-violet light; urine. They constantly wee a little as they travel from their holes, and follow each other’s path. A raptor waits for one to run along this path.
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Lots of money changes hands for an item of clothing once owned by a celebrity. Somehow, because someone once wore a coat in a film or movie, it is worth more than the other spare coats in the film studio’s wardrobe that were never used in the film. Even those people who have no conception of a spiritual link with someone else, feel that the celebrity has imbued ‘something’ into the fabric of the clothing they have worn. They never owned it, chose it, or desired it, yet to a fan it has immense value. Privately owned clothing is far more valuable to a fan because it has the person’s essence permeated throughout its carefully washed threads.
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One of the things that I find noticeable is a personal disconnect that people have with new building developments. Perhaps a hedge which determined the path that a millennia of people followed has been grubbed up, along with once beloved trees that animals and insects over hundreds of years have climbed, skirted, and lived in. Each one of these creatures, human or otherwise has laid a trail. A dog, we know, can follow the trail of a person through a virgin forest with no paths at all. It follows a smell temporarily stuck to the ground.
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Something that is quintessentially British is the history of the land. Unlike the United States of America and Europe there has been no rapid and widespread replacement of long trodden paths, past hedges and old buildings; no disruption to the spiritual scent we have left behind us that has blended together, such as by a Bronze Age pilgrim and a modern day hiker on a path from one city to another; or a lane that zig-zags for no apparent reason other than it was once the path to and from, and separated, ancient strips of farmed land; or open-field strip-farming, on a Lord’s manor.
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Do we also leave a spiritual scent?