I am no botanist, but I have long found pleasure in herb-gathering. I love to come upon a plant which is unknown to me, to identify it with the help of my book, to greet it by name when next it shines beside my path. If the plant be rare, its discovery gives me joy. Nature, the great Artist, makes her common flowers in the common view; no word in human language can express the marvel and the loveliness even of what we call the vulgarest weed, but these are fashioned under the gaze of every passer-by. The rare flower is shaped apart, in places secret, in the Artist’s subtler mood; to find it is to enjoy the sense of admission to a holier precinct. Even in my gladness I am awed...
It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me back; no one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring is shining upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow every winding track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me something of the long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without weariness; I sing to myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew in boyhood....
Alpha.
I appreciate flora, and nature in general, in a vague and offhand way. I've never found that knowing the name of a flower makes me appreciate it more. My fault, I'm sure.
Interestingly, I am in fact as independent (or isolated) as Gissing wasn't, but he wanted Ryecroft to be. My parents have been dead for over 10 years and I have no siblings, children, mate, or even close extended family. If I had an Alsatian I would have to share Bridget Jones's concern that her singleton corpse would be discovered, half eaten, days or weeks after her death. But I don't even have a pet. It's the rare day when I couldn't walk for a few extra hours or even, on a whim, catch a train to some other town for dinner or for the night, and no one would be the wiser or wonder where I was. There is a freedom to it but also the feeling of being rather ephemeral.
Beta.
Beta content will be random, not a direct response to the original text. But in this instance it is at least suggested by the use of the word "Artist" above. I've just finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and I need to say something about Intelligent Design (ID).
Some religious people point to the breathtaking complexity and beauty to be found in nature as a sign that Creation is in fact created by an Intelligent Designer (God). Dawkins shoots this belief down in any number of ways, but I think he overlooks at least one interesting counter argument. It occurred to me that even the most spectacularly designed human artifacts lack a true “designer” -- a single person responsible for the appearance and functioning of the artifact. In every case I can think of, the creation of the artifact is in fact the end result of a long, evolutionary process in which many people contributed to, or combined the work of, previous designers and inventors.
Dawkins counter argument, by the way, rests on the fact that a sudden creation of something of such complexity is far less reasonable than that it slowly took shape, as human artifacts do. And, just as unreasonable, is the idea that something (God), with the mind-blowing creative intelligence to create any of the things the ID people point to, could have magically proceeded all the rest.
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